Word-touch

I do not know you by the color of your eyes or skin

Or by their crinkle when you laugh or by the dimple on your chin

And we have never shaken hands or shared a cup of tea

Yet still, I feel like I know you like somehow you know me

We’ve never strolled the courtyard or paused arm in arm to stare

As morning folds away night’s sky in whispers unaware

And you and I have never wept together, though apart

I know we bear in unison the sorrows of the heart

How is it though we’ve never spoken face to face I hear

The wanting in a word’s embrace, the color of your tear?

And how, though we have never met, does love’s desire bind

In filament stronger than touch, this meeting of the mind?

I know you, simply by your sweep of pen across a sheet

Through expression of type-print thought, love’s fellowship is sweet

And though I do not know you by your crinkles, dimples, such

I know we know each other through the wonder of word-touch

© Janet Martin

It occurs to me as I read the words of other writers on other blogs and websites I feel like I know you, not with the familiarity of face to face fellowship, but that of pen on page... 

Into Night's Silence

 It was such a gorgeous introduction...night meeting dawn! (oops, now my camera is a day behind)

Into night's silence, morning reaches

As a breath of breeze is stirred

Then the singing of a bird

Trills as coral skims yon breaches

A new day is gently waking

Chasing sable from night’s sea

Spilling opportunity

Like a gift free for the taking

Darling, so much is uncertain

None can tell what will befall

Or what ink of Time will scrawl

Ere dusk draws its violet curtain

But this one thing we know surely

Every hour passes through

God’s most kind and tender view

He holds His children securely

Into night's silence Mercy reaches

Barring not one gasp of grace

As dawn slips from Love’s embrace

And Time on our behalf beseeches

© Janet Martin

The Free-fall of an Hour

  

Chiseled upon the free-fall of an hour

Are all those things we did

…and never do

Like love-letters scrawled in mute moment-power

On parchment only God

Can fully view

…and while I blush to read what thought can see

And memory, in remorse

Oft regrets

How ever-sad love’s sentiments would be

Without a God who forgives

…and forgets

With startling ease the clock consumes a year

The free-fall of an hour

Slips through Hope’s glove

While root furnishes its blooms the atmosphere

Is charged with keen relinquishment

Of love

And soon the petal-tears of Wanting weep

Where faith and dreams

Caressed Time’s greedy dirt

And though we clench our fists we cannot keep

An hour of its laughter

Or its hurt

…save for the harbor of the heart where we

Gather a little while

Collectables

Of Beautiful or anger’s Misery

Tried by our faith and fear fraught

Rise and falls

…and even now Time’s elements bequeath

From naught but air

Our hunger’s greatest power

How silently an ocean fills beneath

The touch wrought by the free-fall

Of an hour

© Janet Martin

Here today, gone tomorrow. 

None can one spent hour borrow

Stop, enjoy love's blooms today

Before Time steals them all away

Sonnet of 'Almost-Summer'

The leaf unfolds its glory and the tree

Once stark and bare is nature’s pride and joy

Its lap of shadow sprawls luxuriously

Where we pause, summer’s daydream to employ

As Cold Impossible relents at last

To air that wears our prayers warm, lilac-lined

And we are willing to forgive the past

Allowing love to be kinder and blind

For in this ‘almost-place’ we reconcile

The bitterness of longing for a while

The nearness of you becomes more than thought

And what was once a far-flung fantasy

Rouses within, echoes of what is not

And cannot be restored in poetry

Yet, Longing is too long and far too hard

To endure in this ‘almost summertime’

The tune of moment-song vexes the bard

His obligations torn twixt rose and rhyme

For Duty and desire wrangle where

Spring’s architecture draws and awes our stare

How swift the hour falls prey to yesterday

Nothing exhausts the wellspring of tick-tock

Eager to brush the bud of spring away

In petals scattered on the garden-walk

The invitation of an afternoon is sweet

And yet it seems too often we fore-go

Its beckoning to wander in bare feet

Where wild crab-apple blossoms fall like snow

Kissing the grass with blushing bits of pink

As ‘almost-summer’ teeters on Time’s brink

Are we too old to fall in love again?

This ‘almost summer’ keens thought’s appetite

In reasons complicated to explain

Like love, easy to fall, hard to get right

But ever like the burgeoning detail

Of miracles detained in budded hull

We reach to touch the ravishing regale

Of petal-works splayed where the ground was dull

But now, erupts  in reams of greens and golds

Where ‘almost summer’ bloom by bloom unfolds

© Janet Martin

Where Reaching Shadows Fall...

The garb of night and yesterday

Like love-worn dancers slips away

No sound of feet upon the air

As they ascend Time’s astral stair

Pedestrians upon a street

Where past-present-future compete

Gilt overlay spills unabashed

And where yester-intentions clashed

Once more Time’s morning cup o’er-flows

Where we uplift our wants and woes

To He who cares and intercedes

And satisfies our truest needs

Then, should the grace of God persist

Soon Time consumes this thing of mist

Collecting once again its due

Where now this day is strange and new

Too soon its swaddled beck and call

Lies where dusk’s reaching shadows fall

Then where its reaching shadows fall

...an eighth note in Time's madrigal 

We cannot turn back to recast

What we have written on the past

But now, the old is done away

And in its place a brand new day

© Janet Martin

How is it, I ponder, that something as age-old as Eden can feel so new...morning! What will this day hold as reaching shadows fall? words too hastily spoken (ouch) or thoughtful encouragement? Will it bear disappointment or delight? Such a little potent cup...this thing 'from morn til night'!

By God's grace we go! He blessed us with sunny weather to put out gardens and the farmer's are going strong!