Friday, January 3, 2014

Echoes of Shangri La





There, where the sea runs its melody
Over a shore of footfalls erased
Replaced, until retrospect’s recall
Is suddenly, surreptitiously graced
With keen remembrances skimming the blue
The having and holding and missing of you…

There are many ways to make love, I suppose
Samurai beaches or second mile sweeps
Where sacrifice bleeds colors of the rose
Into the wanting and waiting-drenched deeps
As hope, faith and trust tune tresses of blue
In loving and longing and needing of you…

Ethereal Edens echoing soft
Where once we danced, ere the invasion of
Moments drew us from the Shangri la
Of uninterrupted making love
Better the echo than never to know
Words to a song we whispered long ago

© Janet Martin

Recognize the beauty of love in your hand
Soon its soft echo will silver the sand…

Time's Tender Turbulence...a 'sort-of Sonnet'







We all must bear Time’s tender turbulence
A tide coursing from heaven's ether source
It gathers in its mighty, muted force
Intangible deaths and deliverance
Then rushes o’er a brink into a sea
Where oft we search in vain for its lost shore
But cannot tread Time’s spent for-never-more
And so we brace for storms that yet must be
Before the Captain guides our vessels where
Time does not hinder us from here to there

The footfall of a moment rends the air
In soundless and boundless intensity
Its dividend of brief uncertainty
Soon tugs the ribbons from a wee girl’s hair
And laces traces of silver-soft proof
Where many midnights kissed our dreams of dust
And disappointed schemes of wanderlust
Though we have ducked and tried to stand aloof
There is no bastion for fool’s lament
Where we can hide or escape Time’s intent

…so we embrace the kiss from its abyss
Storm cannot dissuade the morning sun
See how its tide, mighty yet moment-spun
Bestows allotments of heaven-lent bliss
Dumbfounded then, we cannot curse the sweep
Tugging life’s best and worst into its surge
We are compelled by morning’s mercy-urge
To love and laugh and touch and taste and weep
While moments course in river’s through the air
Time's tender turbulence we all must bear

© Janet Martin

I wrote the first two stanzas then looked up to see the Creator stunning the morning landscape with Majesty!


Missing Parts...





I’ve stood at my heart-and-mind mirror
To stare past reflections of ‘ought’
And covered the skyline with whispers
Never cut free from my thought

The words I have never written
Would cover the sky and the sea
Where tears are the voice of the smitten
And silence its full agony

Down where the lane dips to nothing
Where meadow-grass and blue sky touch
I think there must be an ocean
Filled with lost poems and such

Honor must wear its thorns bravely
Siphon its crimson and drink
The cup of loneliness, baby
Fills wildernesses with ink

© Janet~

Thursday, January 2, 2014

Soft Among the Reeds They Wake...






Soft, soft among the reeds they wake
To wander ‘cross the sky
A glimmer on time’s winter lake
Into the by and by

Moon-mellow moments spill to naught
Then daylight tips the scale
Before its blue and gold is caught
In midnight’s mystic grail

From far-off shores to home-front door
This breaking, taking wake
Of kissing you and missing you
Tucks years into its strake

© Janet Martin

Of Well-springs and Wonder



Well-spring of wonder
Merciful Morning
Soothes yester-heaviness
From troubled brow
Somewhere between
Dusk-darkness and dawning
God fills the hour
With Morning’s new Now

Just as the New Year
Melds o’er the departed
Merciful Morning
Melts night’s ebony
Light fills the ocean
Of onyx impression
Well-spring of wonder
In grace-symphony

See, heaven’s hand
He held Jordan’s waters
Doom and deliverance
Meet at death’s brink
See how He fills
Night’s hollow with morning
Kneel at His well-spring
Of mercy and drink

© Janet Martin

Over and over morning melts the night and Grace extends His arm.


Tell them, ‘Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground.’  For the Lord your God dried up the Jordan before you until you had crossed over. The Lord your God did to the Jordan what he had done to the Red Sea when he dried it up before us until we had crossed over.  He did this so that all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the Lord is powerful and so that you might always fear the Lord your God.” Joshua 4:22-24



Mine, Mine, Mine...and please, don't call me greedy





Darling, please, don’t call me selfish
but sometimes I’m not willing
to share your words
with anyone
so I lock them away
for my eyes only to read.
The heart is a gracious keeper.
Sometimes I feel
green-color greedy for your laugh-lines
where only I
want to kiss them
and run my fingers
across those curves
familiar only to me.
And when you are asleep
and I am not
I even want the silence that wraps us
to be mine
to fill with thoughts
entitled
Us~

© Janet Martin

The Shaping of Thought...





They fall like seeds to the wayside of living
Or drift like leaves on a half-written sigh…
Darling, we all need someone to talk to
Word fills the oceans between you and I

They speak our stories; unborn desire
Trembles in font of relinquished turmoil
Somehow the midnight evokes a rare nuance
Lost in the shuffle of mid-morning moil

Mind-scripted manna and silver sun-sparkle
Captured, then molded to shape our thought
 Ink-flavored morsels of loving and longing
Keening the tresses of what yet is not...

Quick little creatures; might fills their meek bearing
Wafting ‘cross miles with the click of a key
Sealed on a stage between covers of parchment
Painting those pictures only thought can see

They fill our diaries and journals; our passion
Ever the hunter for word’s perfect ploy
Finger-tip fragments of heart-soul expression
Spilling in sonnets of sorrow or joy

Darling, without them we simply have kisses
Kisses grow cold when our lips cannot touch
Word, lovely word fills the ocean between us
Shaping the echo of whispers and such…

© Janet~

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Of Eons and Ink





The swell of spilled ink
Falls from ether brink
And none of us knows its full reach
Its thought-river rolls
From the whisper of souls
To thrill and to comfort and teach

We grapple inside
At the tug of its tide
Craving, rebelling, we fight
Keen intercourse
Of thought finding voice
Trembling and trusting, we write

Over Time’s ramparts
And ocean of years
Ink-rivers surge to a place
Of heart touching heart
Though oceans apart
Eons and ink interlace

© Janet Martin

Happy New Year!  

(Lord willing this little creek will keep trickling:)
J~