Of July

Cloud-tumbled fallow shifts, billows above

Green ripple of earth’s supple sea

It is not difficult to love, my love

Where July spins her poetry

River of bloom rushes wild where the child

Fills fingers with its filigree

Purple and gold for the pauper is sold

Under the wild apple-tree

Blessing from God silver coin cannot buy

See, from the coffers of heaven

He fills the garden with rain from the sky

Tickles the soil with its sunshine

Sighing and dreaming, our words warmly grin

‘Lemonade, flip-flops, sea-shore’,

Baskets of berries, bronze summer-kissed skin

We tread her lily-starred floor

Under its awning of azure we lie

Lounging on blankets of grass

Where every hour is full of July

For we know, too soon it will pass

© Janet Martin

This morning is a perfect July morning...after approx. 16 hours of sleep. Suddenly yesterday afternoon my body said, enough! I couldn't stop coughing or shivering and sweating; horrible!!

Feeling somewhat better and hopefully on the mend. I've been spoiled by good health and am not a very patient invalid! 

This Piece of July

There are things we learn we’d return if we could

When it slaps us with its cold truth

But in the long run when its lesson is done

We become wiser; more couth

The slipping and sliding progress we profess

This haggling, hard, headlong stumble

Of duty, desire and sucking quagmire

Of hope and hurt keeps us humble

This piece of July is a blue patch of sky

Sparkle of sun on life’s ocean

Glitter of gold in a long, lonesome hold    

For heartache is not an emotion

Sometimes we pretend, but oh, in the end

Truth cannot be hidden or altered

Thus what we learned is the payoff we earned

There, where our footsteps faltered

Still-subtle course is life’s tick-tocking force

Filling heart-hollows with hunger

Live, love and learn, for there is no return

To days when we were younger

Maybe someday in Time’s mystery-sure way

We will not hurt with hope’s yearning

This piece of July is a blue-heaven sky

Over life’s highway of learning

© Janet Martin

Praying for everyone on this one-step-forward-two-steps-back journey

on life's highway of yearning, earning and learning.

...in the hottest weather we've had so far this year, I have come down with a horrible cold so I stayed home on Sunday morning. I listened to this message instead where no one would be bothered by my coughing and sniffling...

Bard's Ballroom

These days in southern Ontario earth is a ball-room of green glory! We are kept busy to make sure weeds are not the only green we see! It was off to the beach yesterday to celebrate Canada Day!The beautiful drive was part of the celebration; the glory of seed spilling fruit.

Some truths are hard to bear

Remorse, for its full worth

Cannot abolish consequence

For deeds rendered on earth

We are the fruit of choice

Friendships with fantasy

Can slowly bleed the spirit dry

In long-spun misery

Darling, if I could brush

Away each shard of pain

With words I would; but poetry

At times is futile, vain

There is no hiatus

Or freedom from our thought

The ballroom of ten-thousand prayers

Is all that we have got

© Janet Martin

Wild-rose

...and they coax her to 'come! Come to this mall and that mall and see what money can buy! Run to the coffers of jingle; fill your fingers with its lie... but she knows a mall of green field and blue sky where wealth is a wonder money cannot buy...

She is wild rose

Wandering

In a garden

Whispering

Muted things

Pen must descry

Of melody

Coin cannot buy

She is bond-servant

Of quill

Not by force

But her free will

Wild-rose wandering

The wind

In the willow

Understands

She is loyal

To the trust

Of a poet’s

Wanderlust

Wild-rose ever

She will be

Beggar-bloom

Of poetry

© Janet Martin

Amiss

Ah, we would wander quite amiss

If we forget to cherish this

Of moment-mist as day soft-kissed

Becomes the thing the night resists

Before the dark unveils its face

To grant another day of grace

Time’s showcase where life’s finer things

Tug season-tides and tied heart-strings

Would be an insult to the air

If we forget to linger there

To trace a hemline not of chance

But mercy-metered song and dance

Love, wrought within and God-beget

Illiterate, unlearned and yet

Like ether oceans unconfined

Perplexes heart and vexes mind

Rushing where God alone can see

Our wisdom-wanton misery

This universal longing dwells

Where Time's prescription never quells

The war of holding-letting go

And we, unlearned in things of soul

Covet, yet curse its gripping grief

Where love is both angst and relief

Yet, we would wander quite amiss

If we forget to cherish this

Of morning rolling like a wave

Across the utmost that we crave

Ancient, its virgin offering breaks

Anew upon past’s muted lakes

© Janet Martin