Of Wondering and Waiting

When I was your age, dearest girl at my side

I used to wonder what my life would hold

Would I be happy; would I be a bride?

Would my love love me until I am old?

Now I look at you, dear girl at my side

And now I wonder what your life will hold

Will you be a happy; a mother, a bride?

Will your dreams come true; will you grow old?

What ever happens, my dear little girl

To God be true and by His grace we go

Then whatever this life will unfold

We won’t be hobbled by what we don’t know…

© Janet Martin

Always the Morning Returns

Writer's Digest PAD Challenge, day 20
For today’s prompt, take the phrase “Always (blank),” replace the blank with a new word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem.

Always, in spite of its darkest of dark

Or loneliest lonely as night fills each space

Always, from outer regions morning comes

An ether epiphany of love’s kind grace

Always, in spite of our fumbling foray

As ‘neath the scepter of duty we grope

Always the dawn washes midnight away

Awesome allotment of mercy and hope

Always, in spite of our pitiful proof

That we are nothing but man, prone to sin  

Always the darkness is drawn from night’s roof

Always the morning returns once again

© Janet Martin

Filling Want's Pockets

Now, let’s be done with the vain mongering

Of fear and doubt, of greed and despair

Time, like a river that falls through the air

To our outstretched arms, stirs a hungering

For its gentler beauties that cannot be owned

Or stolen by those who are thirsty for things

We all would feel like the richest of kings

Fear, doubt, despair would be softly dethroned

If in-between toil’s quotidian rod

We would determine to follow our feet

Into dusk's lane-way or mid-meadow street

Eager for nothing but cadence of sod

Time is so eager to shuck harvest's sheaf

Tucking to nothing each bud-let and leaf

Now, let’s be done with oppression of guilt

Once and for all our dear Savior died

Knowing that we were sinful, cursed with pride

Over Time’s eons Love’s redemption spilt

And we should have time now, for nothing but Love

Oh, who can say, I have no need of it?

And Time never pauses so we must, to sit

Beneath the awning of heaven above

Tilting our faces, up, up, feel the kiss

Of autumnal farewell, bold, bully-blue

Life’s best of things are not uncommon, new

But ageless and free as lost Eden’s first bliss

Earth’s Gilead suffers long ‘neath our haste

We should slow down and remember to taste

Oh, taste and see that the Lord God is good

Pity the one who despises the truth

Lavishing venom of lust; vile, uncouth

Over a void of Love misunderstood

Now, let’s be done with our anger and hate

Render them, down on an altar of grass

Kneel where the whisper of season-songs pass

Beneath atonement from heavenly gate

Soon Time will solve our quibble and quarrel

Life is too short to be hobbled by things

We should be awed by nature’s offerings

Silver of dew-gem on jade petal-pearl 

Wealth spilling from every seed, bud and limb

Filling want’s pockets with wonders of Him

© Janet Martin

Making Love...with nothing but the touching...

• Write a love poem. Romantic or more general types of love. Or…
• Write an anti-love poem. Some folks just don’t like love poems of any type, so have at it.

At the kitchen table

Scattered with newspaper

And homework

Or breakfast remains

Where the sun pools

Gold in summer

Or daylight falls

Gray in November

Across the chatter

Of little ones

Above life’s spilled milk

Between ‘don’t talk with your mouth full’

And ‘stay sitting until you are finished’

We have made love

With nothing

But the touching

Of eyes

© Janet Martin

Two-for-two- Tues

•  
•  
• PAD challenge, day 19
• Write a love poem. Romantic or more general types of love. Or…
• Write an anti-love poem. Some folks just don’t like love poems of any type, so have at it. 

they were not naked
in each other's eyes
but lust stole the fruit
and they lost
Paradise

Janet Martin

The Excitement of Hope

Dawn excites the morning sky

As gold excites the blue

And hope excites the mortal mind

Like nothing else can do

Desire excites dreams of youth

And want excites the fight

But hope excites immortal truth

As dreams of youth take flight

A bride excites her waiting Groom

A bow excites the string

And hope excites a heart of gloom

Like bud excites the spring

Yes, dawn excites the morning span

As mercy’s gilds its main

But hope excites the heart of man

To rise and try again

© Janet Martin

Believing is Receiving

  

We crave it, Lord, we crave it

There is an empty place

That nothing in this world can fill

But Love’s atoning grace

The seed fulfills its purpose

Yet, it is not life’s Whole

Though harvest fills our bellies

It cannot feed the soul

We want it; how we want it

Things weary with their weight

Its care expands a hollow where

Love’s longings saturate

Believing is receiving

Receiving fills that place

In need of mercy’s pardon

And love’s atoning grace

© Janet Martin

Though harvest fills our bellies it cannot feed the soul...

Of Woman-wonderment

Victoria laughed as she observed my scribbles, Oh, that's right,' she surmised, 'there's no back-space button on a pen!' I laughed back and told her when you get to my age you have to write fast because  train of thought can derail in an instant! ...oh, I love that girl teetering on the brink of childhood softly slipping... 

*When I was a child

I thought as a child,

I spoke as a child,

I reasoned as a child,

But when I became a woman

I put away childish things

Yet, now and then I covet

Un-obliterated wings

And wish that I was wonder-awed

By joy’s simplicity

Of snow-flake serenading sod

In spangled ecstasy

Where moments are not measuring spoons

That soon we reminisce

But simply the soft, startling swoon

Of wonder’s present-bliss

And from my laundry-room of thought

Bent old by worry’s woe

I wonder, is life’s wonder sought

Or found by letting go?

My woman-hands, worn by demands

Of woman’s sacred ‘must’

Have somehow rendered youth’s romance

To life’s white-knuckled trust

And I recall those ‘childish things’

With envious restraint

For blessing of a ‘woman’s wings’

Cannot afford complaint

But still, the vantage-point of youth

Smothered by subtle sighs

Or tainted by time’s turbid truth

Of hellos and goodbyes

Stirs echoes of a by-gone age

A daily wonder-land

Of squishing ‘cross spring’s mud-warm page

Or summer’s castle-sand

Of unadulterated hope

Wild as the autumn wind

Or silver haloing the slope

Of summer left behind…

Then I look up

Ah, there it is

Curled leaf left on a limb

Etched in a song of mercy’s kiss

Melting the midnight scrim

The crumpled sock within my clutch

Is Heaven’s happy proof

A tangible and tender touch

Of children ‘neath my roof

Their laughter fills kitchen-sink grail

Suds bubble contentment

Where dirty dishes tell the tale

Of sweet suppertime spent

Yes, I have left life’s ‘childish things’

Of virgin enchantment

To rise up on the wiser wings

Of woman-wonderment

© Janet Martin

* found in 1 Cor. 13.