Beautiful Basics

Today's PAD challenge; write a back to basics poem

Creek-song winds lazy, like honey-gold dream

Locust whines high in bronze willow-limb tent

August noon, hazy, sultry-sweet requiem

Trickles to vaults of each summer soon spent

Childhood sprawls endless beneath bare brown feet

Mother calls ‘dinner’, baby spills his milk

Farmer is whistling in dusk’s dying heat

Moments fill archives with silver-soft silk

Screen door slams twenty or more times a day

Heaven splays fretwork of shadow on grass

Where on its dappled quilt innocence plays

Not knowing yet how swift youth’s summers pass

Mother taps stove-pipe and calls, ‘rise and shine’

Oatmeal to water; breakfast in an hour

We splash through dawn calling co’ boss’ ‘milking-time’

Bessie is slow, her tail flings brawny shower

Creek-song winds lazy into the sunset

Childhood and motherhood soon coalesce

Oatmeal to water, sonny spills his milk

Mother recalls simple basics; life’s best

© Janet Martin

Back to the Basics of Love

My sisters and I ,way back when; sigh...those days were as 'basic' as could be! Childhood...days of long, slow-cooked oatmeal breakfasts and forever-afternoons.

PAD Challenge day 21: write a 'back to basic' poem

Let’s get back to the basics of love

Slip out of haste’s sterilized gloves

And re-familiarize our touch

With words like ‘long’ and ‘slow’ and such

Distraction fits in pockets now

A world at restless finger-tips

Robbing romancers of a long, slow

Afternoon intent on eyes and lips

Perhaps, if I were two by two

And on my forehead was a screen

You’d touch me like you used to do

Instead of only ‘in-between’

Darling, lets get back to love’s bare facts

Seems these days way too much distracts

…the devil laughs in dings and beeps

Technology gathers its sheep

Love craves long, blue-eyed afternoons

Of slow-dances to paradise

Before we sacrificed heart-tunes

To curs-ed gadgets pocket-size

We trip over love-miracles

And God-granted ability

Of have-hold, live-laugh, touch and taste

Forgetting to just, simply. Be.

© Janet Martin

 For the most part hubby and I are still pretty old-fashioned, but I look at the next generation (yep, middle-age proof in its full glory;) and worry about how relationships will survive this gadget-age...

Exalt, Exalt the One

Exalt, exalt the One

Dominion left His throne

A robe of flesh to don

A death of thieves to bear

Exalt, exalt the name

Of He who bore our shame

The Son of God: He came

Hope’s stronghold to prepare

Exalt, exalt I AM

For He became a Lamb

No blood of bull or ram

Could cleanse or justify

Exalt then oh, exalt

Atonement without fault

Jesus poured out his All

God’s wrath to satisfy

Exalt, exalt Him then

Jesus saves sons of men

Once and for all He came

Death’s valley to pass through

Come, lay sin’s idols down

Beneath Love’s thorny crown

Redemption’s spotless gown

Waits there for me and you

© Janet Martin

Ephemeral Quaff

 

This ephemeral quaff

Of moments keens a thirst

For the Intangible, aloft

Like thought’s unwritten verse

A madrigal of want

In spite of work and prayer

Rouses within a hellish taunt

Of venomous despair

Desire cannot change

The free-fall of an hour

And none of us can rearrange

A clock’s incessant pow’r

…and who of us can boast

A lump-sum afternoon?

Tick-tock, tick-tock, Time’s uttermost

Is forged in moment-swoon

…and ever as we gulp

We drain its ether bowl

Until the final Curtain-call

That strips body from soul

Fear-stunned, yet fearless I

Beseech Mercy’s veiled face

Faith is not feckless frippery

But trusting God for grace

© Janet Martin

Easter Song

  

Praise He who is not dead

He is the King of kings

Come, offer up your fear and dread

Where Love transcends all things

Death conquers death, as Life

Breaks forth in ageless laud

Earth’s sepulchers of stone could not

Constrain the Lamb of God

Grief turns to joyful song

Come; see what He has said,

‘Why do you seek the Living One

Among these mortal dead’?

I AM. I AM. I AM.

His love would not withhold

From sinners lost, a Perfect Lamb

As Prophets long foretold

Yet thorn and scorn and foe

And Death could never claim

The Victory; Jesus arose

Ah, sing that sacred Name

For Death has conquered death

The veil twixt man and Priest

Is rend in two; He bids us come

To taste the marriage feast

Praise Him; He is alive

Jesus, Jesus receive

His love will rescue and forgive

All those who will believe

© Janet Martin

 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures...

1 Cor. 15:3-5 

Wishing each of you a  Blessed Easter Day.

Green

PAD Challenge day 19: choose a color for your poem title

We press through life’s marketplaces

Winter cold and summer heat

Holding hands and kissing faces

Arabesque of bittersweet

We fill baskets with life-moments

 Amethyst and baby’s breath

For we cannot see the fulcrum

Pivoting twixt life and death

…as we dash through fields of flowers

To a skyline out of reach

Save to sundry sweep of hours

Washing over brawny beach

We embrace, knowing tomorrow

Bids us suffer parting’s pain

Yet we cannot quench with sorrow

Love; and so we love again

Asking nothing of God’s favor

But perhaps, if He would deem

Here and there a little picnic

On our own wee patch o’ green

© Janet Martin

Colombian

 PAD challenge Day 19: make a color the title of your poem.

If I had to choose

only one hue from life’s color spectrum

it would have to be you

…You who rouses me from sleep

in aromatic pleasantries

Let others steep virtuous green teas

I prefer you; Platonist teaser

of Colombian romance

filling my taste-buds

with morning’s first dance

I close my eyes now

…ah yes, supple and slow

you unleash the miracle

of Colombian glow

not in the east

or past hills to the south

but swallow

after swallow

in my mouth

© Janet Martin

Azure

PAD Challenge day 19: make a color your title and write your poem

I lost her in your endless eyes

While she was chasing butterflies

Through fields of periwinkle youth

Before the cuff of crimson truth

Dragged her through mud and umber dirt

Where still nature’s four seasons flirt

With things like holding-letting-go

And emerald isles and white-white snow

She turns, startled to realize

She lost herself in azure eyes

…forgetting that in tick of clocks

Come silver sighs through golden locks

Where time takes flight
In dark and light,

Its ebony, chartreuse disguise

Yielding at noon to azure eyes

And there, ah, there, she twirled and danced

To melodies by love enhanced

Letting the hour have its way

Before your azure turned to gray

And giddy kiss of coral dawn

Drew charcoal shadows on the lawn

Beneath an awning sequin-swept

And where your azure laughter wept

She disappeared; you kiss her face

But now a woman takes her place

© Janet Martin