October Lullaby

Hush-a-bye orchard, thy limb is unbent

Harvest is gathered and summer is spent

Hush-a-bye leaf-lay, thy choir is plucked

Beneath the spire of summer-song tucked

Hush-a-bye garden, may slumber be sweet

Soon you will waken to dance of bare feet

Hush-a-bye twilight of sultry repose

Lamplight and wood-smoke replace dewy rose

Hush-a-bye children of moorland and grove

Home is a hearth without seasons, my love

Hush-a-bye shadow, snuffed from the gold hill

Feathering meadows where echoes soft-spill

Hush-a-bye zephyr and hush-a-bye loon

Summer is sleeping beneath hunter’s moon

© Janet Martin

Tea-time

There is nothing quite as lovely as a kettle when it sings

Ah, surely, surely tea-time is one of life’s kindest things

For in the hustle-bustle of life’s hasting human-race

It’s nice to stop and pour a cup of quiet tea-time grace

English, earl gray or peppermint, lemon or chamomile

Or any other flavor, tea is like a kettle’s smile

Or like a hug, it satisfies the middle afternoon

To sit a bit and pour a cup of happy-happy tune

It gathers friends together yet is lovely on its own

It warms us when the weather weeps in cold, gray monotone

It brings with it a book perhaps, or a moment to dream

With eyes half-shut, we hold a cup of aromatic steam

Life is too short to hurry-scurry without pause, you see

And what is so important that it cannot wait through tea?

Time’s bric-a-brac and tick-o-tock is noisy nothingness

If we deprive our little lives of tea-time happiness

Yes, there's nothing quite as lovely as a kettle when it sings

It puts on pause the fretting flaws that living surely brings 

So if you're feeling down and out, perhaps its time to quit

Just long enough to pour the love of tea and sit a bit

 

 

© Janet Martin

Painting a Poem

Brush dips to a palette

Of tinctures vast

As canvas of future,

Present and past

Word-spectrum glistens;

The artist must choose

From its plethora

Which colors to use

Pink from a peony,

Silver-swept sea,

Rush of a rain-song

Hush of stripped tree

Mauve mist of morning

Onyx of dark

Little Fred’s freckles,

Lilt of a lark

Trial and triumph,

Laughter and tear,

Create life-colors

To paint with, my dear

Thought scans perpetual

Possibility

Touching a tempest

Of unpenned poetry

© Janet Martin

Dusk Doggerel

 

Dusk reaches where each field is like a sea of gold-flecked sod

To tousle Benny’s hair a bit and tweak the cheeks of Maud

Then while we are distracted by the color of its sighs

It plucks the daylight from the air and dims the lighted skies

Like flowers, hours open, bloom then fall into the dust

Like children, we dash through Time’s living-room of toil and trust

Like miracles, the everyday unfurls from Mercy-reels

To scatter memories like leaves beneath dusk’s chariot-wheels

Purple is more than posies pressing through spring’s dormancy

It is whispers caressing what will soon no longer be

It is the mist of autumn rolling in across the moor

Where dusk reaches across the air and closes daylight’s door

It gathers, like a mother hen its brood of buy and sell

It settles soft upon the glen and woodland citadel

It rustles in a lullaby of plush, hush-shushing peace

And muffles with its ruffling sigh day's final, faintest crease

© Janet Martin

...that's how it felt to me, sitting on the steps outside until it was dark, then coming in to realize its only 7:15!

 

Through Tears

Through tears we laugh

Through tears we weep

Oh, language of heart’s deepest deep

Through tears we groan

Through tears we praise

Oh, language of Thought’s wordless ways

Through tears we hope

Through tears we trust

Oh, language of time’s mortal dust

Through tears we mourn

Or celebrate

Oh, language of human estate

Through tears we suffer

And rejoice

Oh, language of world-kindred voice

Through tears we love

Through tears we pray

Until God wipes our tears away

© Janet Martin

 He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death' or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." Rev. 21:4