Pleasure

The poetic form *The Pleiades 

*seven six-syllable lines beginning with the letter of the title-word

Perhaps she will fail you

Please, don't misunderstand

Poetry perplexes

Poets with pen in hand

Pacing half-paragraphs

Probing thought-oceans stirred

Painting pictures with word

 Janet Martin

Speaking Out for Truth

 Matt turns 16 on Friday...what is a mother to do?

Dear child, I’d like to tell you

That this world is full of lies

And you must ever be on guard

For wolves in sheep-disguise

It seems that you are growing

Up too fast for my own good

So I would like to set things straight

Like every parent would

Dear child, this life; it isn’t fair

Not everybody wins

And just because we may not care

Does not absolve our sins

Judgment day is coming

God is gracious, life is cruel

Be kind to your neighbor and

Don’t scoff at rules or school

Texting and driving kills

Drinking and driving too

As do ten thousand thrills and ills

Not yet revealed to you

Don’t talk with your mouth full

Brush and floss, ah, you may laugh

But someday if you’re lucky

Folk may want your autograph

…and you don’t want to meet them

With your teeth still full of lunch

Remember; love is more important

Than a six-pack when you crunch

And looking out for others

…gentle words and ready smile

Unlike fabricated fashion

Never will go out of style

Treat a lady like you hope

Someone treated your mother

Don’t be loose with things like kisses

Respect one another

Dare to stand alone

If it means doing what is right

For though you may be scorned

You will be precious in God’s sight

Read the Bible, it’s the only

Infallible truth

Life is short though now you think

You own the fount of youth

Be kind always, always

Someday you may be husband or wife

And habits molded early

Often follow us through life

Pray in the morning, pray at noon

And pray again at night

For it is easy to get lost

If we yield faith to sight

…and God is ever-faithful

Rich or poor can trust His Word

He wrote the most amazing

Love story that man has heard

Live, laugh, love with courage

Be your best self you can be

Don’t forget that Jesus loves you

From now through eternity

…Dear child, I’d like to tell you

To be ever on your guard

For wolves dressed in sheep-clothing

Wrong is easy; right is hard

And it is wise to study keenly

What are lies and what is Truth

There’s a world full of opinion

Waiting to influence Youth

© Janet Martin

I've written the verse below in numerous cards, as my mother did to me because it is hard to ' lean not on our own understanding ' and to 'trust Him with all our heart' no matter our age.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
    and lean not on your own understanding; 
 in all your ways submit to him,
    and he will make your paths straight. Prov. 3:5-6

On April...

April, though famous for its fool

Unravels silver from its spool

Then every indent is a pool

And every pool a mirror

She spills and fills enchanted nook

With laughter from her unchained brook

And we forget how long it took

To quash her predecessor

April, flighty, double-minded

Matron armed with broom and bonnet

Sun-rain-snow, a vexing sonnet

Testing farmer-courage

She arranges bud on bower

Probes the pod that births the flower

Breaks earth’s bondage with her shower

Wakens winter storage

April, metaphor for Life

Gray and gold, laughter and strife

Where each gritty glance is rife

With hope’s ever-keen yearning

April, Time's bridge twixt white and green

Summer’s rebel, winter’s queen

Wisdom’s wait-wizened in-between

Lent for our humble learning

© Janet Martin

 I dare say  no one here is mourning her passing

and yet, April is rife with blessing...


April at a glance...

This poem was inspired as I read an oldie by Robert Frost which reminded me that April has always been like a double-minded man, unstable in all her ways ;)

Two Tramps in Mud Time or A Full-time Interest

By Robert Frost  (my book dates it 1936 and here it says 1934)

 Out of the mud two strangers came
And caught me splitting wood in the yard,
And one of them put me off my aim
By hailing cheerily “Hit them hard!”
I knew pretty well why he dropped behind
And let the other go on a way.
I knew pretty well what he had in mind:
He wanted to take my job for pay.

Good blocks of beech it was I split,
As large around as the chopping block;
And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.
The blows that a life of self-control
Spares to strike for the common good
That day, giving a loose to my soul,
I spent on the unimportant wood.

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You’re one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you’re two months back in the middle of March.

A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight
And fronts the wind to unruffle a plume
His song so pitched as not to excite
A single flower as yet to bloom.
It is snowing a flake: and he half knew
Winter was only playing possum.
Except in color he isn’t blue,
But he wouldn’t advise a thing to blossom.

The water for which we may have to look
In summertime with a witching wand,
In every wheel rut’s now a brook,
In every print of a hoof a pond.
Be glad of water, but don’t forget
The lurking frost in the earth beneath
That will steal forth after the sun is set
And show on the water its crystal teeth.

The time when most I loved my task
These two must make me love it more
By coming with what they came to ask.
You’d think I never had felt before
The weight of an axhead poised aloft,
The grip on earth of outspread feet.
The life of muscles rocking soft
And smooth and moist in vernal heat.

Out of the woods two hulking tramps
(From sleeping God knows where last night,
But not long since in the lumber camps.)
They thought all chopping was theirs of right.
Men of the woods and lumberjacks,
They judged me by their appropriate tool.
Except as a fellow handled an ax,
They had no way of knowing a fool.

Nothing on either side was said.
They knew they had but to stay their stay
And all their logic would fill my head:
As that I had no right to play
With what was another man’s work for gain.
My right might be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better right — agreed.

But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For heaven and the future’s sakes.

Reading Between the Lines...

Poetry; the most intimate road between writer and reader.  James Scoles

When we make love out of habit, not heart

We pander with plebeian phrases, fine art

Finger-tip routine and word void of need

Scorns silver-linings with second-rate greed

There is no poetry in worn cliches

Cold, like an ember bereft of its blaze

Darling, how busy our bodies become

Deaf to the music that musters the poem

Surely the laugh-lines of yesterday’s bliss

Longs to replenish our mouths with its kiss

Touch; be the climax of hard-fought foreplay

Second-mile murmurs through guerdons of clay

Beauty is not in the shaping of skin

But bleeds from rudiments somewhat akin

To scarlet-stained front-lines where we over-threw

Common-clad odds to protect what we knew

Darling, let’s undo the air with our eyes

…covet the apex of want for its Prize

For when we make love out of habit, not heart

We desecrate its most venerable part

© Janet Martin

  

How Much Is an Hour?

 Each Tuesday and Friday mid-afternoon begins The Question; how much longer until Matthew and Victoria come home? and often my reply is 'oh, about an hour'. Yesterday he sighed a big sigh and asked, but how much is an hour?

How much is an hour

Little lad asked of me,

Why child, don’t you know it?

An hour is free

…free for the taking and making of dreams

Free for the tasting or wasting its reams

Free for our laughter or perhaps a tear

Free to be wandered or squandered in fear

Free walk once around the clock

Free to be kissed, hugged or frittered in thought

Free to our labor and free to our play

Free to wee child or to sage, bent and gray

Free-fall of hope and opportunity

Free phantom nugget of ‘almost-memory’

Free frame to fill with whatever we do

Free Wonderful as I spend it with you

How much is an hour, dear child at my knee?

Why, the whole world over an hour is free

© Janet martin

Calling It More Than Day

PAD Challenge Day 30: today’s prompt, write a “calling it a day” poem

The outer edge of almost night etches skylines of dark on light

Its chief appointment of mere air defeats determination’s stare

And we cannot bond to our touch the hour ere time’s quiet clutch

Reclaims its gasp of gifted grace into that phantom holding place

Of history and memory and all that nevermore will be

We are its troubadours where Want’s storehouse of thought implores

To minute-hand and moment-sphere and season’s spitting year on year

This doggerel twixt life and death impresses to each granted breath

The Imminence of recompense trembling in Time’s deliverance

Of black and white and almost night before that first and final Flight

We simply call it Night and Day; this dallying on Life’s highway

Leads not to tombs or holding rooms; its smattering of broken blooms

A testament of greed and need and Mercy for which all men plead

As we tread more than moment-lore to that supreme, Ultimate Door

…how gossamer Time’s gilded string links eons to each evening

© Janet Martin

I was suddenly struck by a surge of Time; its breadth designed

in morning prayer and breakfasts where 

children leave out-grown shoes behind...

 

Farewell April 2014

Our wearied optimism reaches past this cold, gray day

Spring charms that we envisioned have been pinned on sleeves of May

For April did not flatter us with honey-golden guile

But scattered flurries where we dreamed of daffodil-drenched isle

April unleashes her farewell in phlegmatic downpour

We do not mourn her passing as we haste her through the door   

For our misconception of a bonny green-eyed lass

Has waned; and now to merry May we lift hope’s polished glass

Dear April, please do not consider us vulgar or rude

We do not want to shoulder long this morose attitude

But oh, the farmer hungers for the thrill of furrow-dust

How long must we be patient, pleading for anointed trust?

The gardener is waiting with perfection planted dream

The poet pines for music of dusk’s amethyst requiem

The lad inside the window wonders when the rain will end

While mother murmurs prayers and platitudes to be patient

Farewell then, fretting shower where the flower waits to bloom

May waits to strum the hour with froth-cloth of petal plume

We wait to till earth’s thoroughfare and plant its field once more

But first we kindly usher April out through Time’s back door

© Janet Martin

After the storms in the central/southern states the past few days (thoughts and prayers are with you) it seems trite to even almost grumble or be negative but this April/ winter and spring so far has broken numerous records NOT on the sunny, warm side. We had one or two truly warm, pleasant days in April; not enough to dry fields and allow farmers to plant at all! Still, God is in control and we do not want to question His order…

Come, Come where Blossoms Bloom

Come, see where blossoms bloom

 (click link to see gorgeous blossom)

Come, see where blossoms bloom

Before the sweet of fruit

And leaf returns to root

Hope spills its half-bud plume

Come, stroll where dreaming roof

Is fraught with fragrant flow’r

Before the bleeding bow’r

Bends low with harvest-proof

…and here we, arm in arm

‘neath virgin canopy

Of what is yet to be

Taste youth in all its charm

Come, come where blossoms bloom

Too soon the fruit will fall

Its musky madrigal

Filling thought’s holding-room

© Janet Martin