Where Words Reach...or Night Watchman

Words reach into the air where the Night Watchman never sleeps

Thought yearns and turns to prayer beneath His ever-list’ning keep

The filament of hours spills its will to yesterday

We stoop to count hope’s pocket-pence a-scattered in its fray

Time’s touch is ever hungry for those things beyond its reach

We gather in its rendering the lessons it must teach

And some find mirth and money while others find only pain

For some the skies are sunny and for some it always rains

The Night Watchman loves all the children of Time’s trying sphere

He is the witness to our need, our greed, both smile and tear

And while some stuff their larders where another licks the crumbs

Time does not beg or barter but forevermore becomes…

…becomes the aftermath of choice, the proof of our first love

Often the hand becomes the voice as thought dons living’s glove

And while some loll in coffers laden with silver and gold

Others endure love's offers of grief, loneliness and cold

The Night Watchman never forsakes His post but tends full-well

His people harboring a soul bound for heaven or hell

How still the night expands into black eons overhead

Foolish to flex our gifted hands and boast ‘bout gifted bread

For all we have is but the granting of God’s grace whereby

We go, whether with humble praise or bitter quest of ‘why’

The Night Watchman longs for the prayer where care and need beseech

He bends His ever-list’ning ear to where whispered words reach…

© Janet Martin

Night's Poem

Pad Challenge Day 6: Write a night poem

Mute layer over layer merges blue on bronze-bathed sweep

Of pastures on the hillside, silver rivers in the dell

It snuffs the reaching shadows scrawled in whispers on sod-fell

Where minstrels croon a vesper tune to lull the day to sleep

Darling, the road to paradise beneath duvets and dreams

Is scarred with sundry stumbles where attempts at greatness spill

But we will set aside the sorrows of morning until

This spread of star-soft kiss dissolves within time’s begging streams

This span of God-gifted reprieve from duty's tireless tome

Tucks earth beneath the luxury of slumber’s smiling sighs

Save for the bard that wanders through its wonder-woven skies

In search of that elusive word lost somewhere in night's poem

© Janet Martin

Dusk Dirge to Moment-surge

 This morning I said, Saturday already?! and tonight I wonder where it went so quickly...

Dusk spreads her evening gown

Of blue across the dale

Remnant threads of coral-orange

Tint her fading veil

Upon earth’s solitude

Time opens up a room

Claiming one more day to rest

Forever in its tomb

We cannot altar streams

From whence they come or go

Filament of hopes and dreams

Vibrant in its flow

How silver-ly it rolls

A free and phantom mist

Rushing through our hearts and souls

To moments memory-kissed

Janet~

This Saturday's muffins are a special treat! Orange poppy-seed muffins

Waiting to be Discovered...

PAD challenge day 5: write a discovery poem

We come, running thought over curvature, line

Ancient twists, yet never old

Ink-jeweled buds on an alphabet vine

What will each flower unfold?

Discovery is a beautiful rush

The artist of ink is a king

See how new empires unfurl from his brush

Words are a wonder-full thing

Shuffle, arrange, rearrange; what will be?

Over and over again

Message and medium intricately

Mingling in drops from a pen

Drawn to this well of infinity

We know that here we can find

Unending treasure; possibility

As broad as the reach of the mind

Poetry hovers, its fanciful form

Wafting in whispers unstrung

Ah, how the surge of its sweet, soundless storm

Vexes the want on my tongue

© Janet Martin  

Discoveries...

 

 PAD Challenge day 5:  Write a discovery poem

I have discovered the sultan of pride

Is not easily dethroned

Master-mind of a thousand lies

Though with my tear-drops stoned

I have discovered love’s great joy

Is like a quick switch-blade

For sorrow keens its sharpest curve

Where joy its acme laid

I have discovered in your eyes

How there, the truth oft slips

Regardless of the syllables

A-flounder on your lips

I have discovered beauty’s best

Is not a thing of skin

Its fairness is unparalleled

Where love shines from within

I have discovered year on year

That life’s ceaseless return

Regardless of status or age

Are more lessons to learn

© Janet Martin

I Have Discovered...

PAD challenge Day 5: write a discovery poem

  

Worry, fussing, fretting

Never solves a thing

But drains the hour of happiness

Where laughter could have been

Brooding, venting, raging

Wasted energy

For I have discovered

What must be will be

Waiting, praying, trusting

As sight and faith contend

For I have discovered

God is faithful in the end

© Janet Martin

 Trying not to fret as rain turned to snow overnight! Hubby battled blizzards through northern Ontario yesterday...

My Shangri La

No ego bloated braggarts barter here

And to this gentle-shouldered paradise

I come without the pressure to adhere

To codes and rules and Time’s impatient sighs

Perfection blooms in ghastly disarray

Inviting me to revel in bronze bliss

Where work is more like toil’s vacation pay

And dirt the proof of summer’s sanguine kiss

Beneath the rod of God on sod I bow

Midst bowers bent with vegetable and fruit

As mercies only His touch can bestow

Awakens worship’s wonder, ‘it is good’

…and here a breeze bickers with butterfly

And there a bloom becomes a portico

For honey bee; above an azure sky

Sprawls where a fleet of billowed cloud-ships go

No tock of clock corrupts this tranquil berth

Though high noon sun has dipped beyond the trees

I do not hasten from this heaven-earth

Of locust song and vesper melodies

For just as Time began in such a place

Surely, God walks here in the cool of day

Where gratitude and full joy interlace

When I come to my garden plot to pray

© Janet Martin

This poem tied for fourth place in a monthly Inscribe writing competition.We were asked to write on what brings us joy. The weather may keep our feet from the garden but not our thoughts:)

 I appreciate all the kind and helpful words and suggestions for improvement. Thank-you! esp. to those brave enough to voice helpful hints!

Since David the Psalmist and Shakespeare and Frost...

 PAD Challenge Day 4: Write a 'since' poem

Since David the Psalmist,

And Shakespeare and Frost

Since Marvell and Milton and Clare

Since Browning and Dickinson, Kipling and Yeats

Poetry spills everywhere

Since Coleridge, Tennyson,

Shelley, Swift, Blake

Since Byron, Longfellow and Guest

Wordsworth and Whitman and Herrick and Donne

Poetry speaks the heart best

Since Whittier, Rossetti,

Wyatt, Watts, Poe

Raleigh, Patmore, Phillips and Wilde

Lawrence and Hardy and Drummond and Burns

Poetry is heaven’s Child

Since Collins and Cowper,

Fitzgerald, Bronte

Since Lincoln, Kilmer and Riley

We touch the soul

Though time's centuries roll

Of God-kisses in poetry 

...to name just a few!

© Janet Martin