You Know how It Is...

You know how it is, she whispered

Wordless my own words slipped;

‘Sorrow is a constant companion

Joy is a cup, cracked and chipped’

Happiness is the heart’s halo

Spilling its light to the eye

Longing, a ravenous shadow

Raking the deep with its sigh

Love is a compass whereby we

Will never be led astray

Hope succors self’s daily dying

Where love is leading the way

Yet, when the day-dust has settled

And all of dusk’s colors have dripped

Over a halo of nettles

Into joy’s cup, cracked and chipped

I hear the bittersweet echo

Only spent years can admit;

‘Sorrow is a constant companion

Joy is a cup cracked and chipped’

© Janet Martin

Winter Is Here

Jim sent me this photo from northern Ontario simply entitled 

Winter is Here

In spite of what calendars say, my dear

no one can argue this; winter is here

J~

Of Countdowns

My countdown girl (aka Victoria;) likes this screen-saver right now...

We count down hours to Christmas

Or flowers

Vacation, homecomings

And such

While we climb over

Mountains of winter

to summer

as years melt beneath

Time’s Grand Touch

Its free-fall of farewell

Evokes us to bear well

Parting’s sweet sorrow, for then

We begin counting the days, oh my darling

Until we will meet again

Birthdays and mirth-days

And days filled with weeping

Where Death dolls

That Greater Good-bye

Working or playing or

Waking or sleeping

Countdowns fill ladders

To the sky

For as tears and laughter

Fall to ever-after

One thing above all

None can see

Where over and under

Pulses silent thunder

…the countdown

To eternity

© Janet Martin

 So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him. Matt. 24:44

But, In a poem

Soon you would be nothing at all to me

Forgot; thus I save you in poetry

Yesterday’s sun spilled in rivers of gold

Today the sky weeps metallic tears; cold

All that we hold is a bold, calloused wink

Save for a poem sealing whispers in ink

Then, in the sorrow of morrow’s today

Nothing can steal it forever away

Morning is eager to drink noon, then night

Time; a voracious tick-tock appetite

We cater to its appointments of air

Poetry pens its triumph and despair

For too soon all would be nothing at all

Lost to the ages where new pages fall

But, in a poem we traverse once more

Back to the faces and places of yore

Moment, be kind while the mind tries to find

and frame the right pieces we soon leave behind

© Janet Martin

Slip-sliding Away...

PAD Challenge day 22: For today’s prompt, write a release poem.

Rain slips from windows

Leaf slips from tree

Time slips into

A memory

Youth slips so swiftly

Into by and by

Darling, thought’s hunger

Oft slips from my eye

Like rain from a window

Like flowers that fall

Like touch, as you heed to

Life’s beckoning call

I hear lost summers

As winter-song slips

Into the trembling

Of tired fingertips

Want slips in whispers

Where echoes must be

Caught in a river

Released to a sea

Ah, where is that sea

To which all moments slip?

Fueling forevermore

Drip

         by

                    drip

© Janet Martin

 

Of Fireside and Friendly Chair (hubby would testify this is definitely a direction on his compass:)

 I was going to call the person who kicked off their footwear to come and put it away...then I noticed most of it was mine...oops;-(

PAD Challenge day 21: For today’s prompt, pick a direction on the compass, make it the title of your poem, and write that poem.

From north and south, from east and west

Wherever we come from

The one direction we love best

Is that which points us home

The heart for all its dreaming ways

Wherever it may roam

Concedes, no matter where its strays

There is no place like home

The footwear on the rag-mat there

Are worn by those we love

Its fingerprints and crumbs and cares

A sacred treasure-trove

And though the lure of distant quest

Of sea or mountain air

May draw us, north, south, east and west

To taste its fancied fare

…nothing can ever quite compare

With that to which we come

Of fireside and friendly chair

And darling home, sweet home

© Janet Martin

Jim says there is one thing that motivates him every Monday when he leaves; to see how soon he can point the nose of his rig homeward. It is pointed that way now somewhere in the big, white north.

 Most truckers prefer the green backdrop to white:)

Last week this crash reignited fervent prayer for all our trucker-heroes! Thankfully no one was seriously hurt!

We are proud and thankful for our dedicated transport truck-drivers!