Same Here...

PAD Challenge day 26:For today’s prompt, write a same poem.

Same sky
same sweeping of the
midnight dark awry
to light the same old earth
with that same sun
...pray, tell me why?

The breadth
of an hour does not change,
its tick-tock force
eases these dust-to-dust soul-frames
to God
in its discourse

...and there it is;
the awesome why
and wherefore of it all
This same dark- light
of day and night
Leads to a Great Roll-call

Janet Martin

Today is Such a Lovely Thing

The corridor of yesterday

Has no trespasser though we may

Stand at the gate and wait, wait, wait

We always only have Today

And when today slips from this place

Of crowded streets and winds we chase

Nothing can trouble it again

Or snuff from it one tiny trace

Today is such a lovely thing

From it all forms of beauty spring

And wing their flight from morn to night

In subtle moment-winnowing

And soon what now we call today

Will be forever far away

Thus we ought taste and not to waste

This gilded crumb of gold and gray

For corridors of yesterday

Have no trespassers though we may

Stand at the gate; we dare not wait

And miss the gift wrapped in Today

© Janet Martin

My Today is smelling like Mr. Clean due to the fall cleaning I am trying to wrap up in November (and a week off), so we can focus on other things in Dec.

Once Upon a June #2

Once upon a June we were

The girls with flowers in our hair

And time on hands not quite as worn

By motherhood and

Many a summer morn

Once upon a dream or two

Eyes sparkled, lustrous as the dew

That gleamed before the door of noon

Closed on the wisp of

Many a moon and June

Once upon November’s eve

A woman’s heart begins to grieve

The suddenness of what once was

And cannot ever

Be again because

…once upon a June we were

But girls with flowers in our hair

Where now we watch our daughters swoon

With summer dreams of

  'once upon a June'

© Janet Martin

Once Upon a June

 A surge of warmer air made last Tuesday's white disappear. With the wild wind howling since yesterday morning, the temps have once again plummeted. I was out just now trying to 'help' the wind scatter 'the petals strung on once upon a June'. The leaf pile got buried in snow so I'm hoping nature's big broom will sweep it away before spring;)

PAD Challenge day 22:For today’s prompt, write an alone poem.

The cup of summer spilled over
To autumn's howling broom
Where fields once dizzy with clover
Are swept of blushing bloom
Now every woods, a ghost-town
Moans where the wind runs wild
Like she who dashes half-madly
In search of yester's child

November, you are a loner
For none your case will plead
Or beg you to tarry longer
...we bolt our doors instead
While you torment the window
With tears you cannot quell
Your only friend the shadow
Stark-cold, and skeletal

Ah, once upon a June rose-bold
Your predecessor lay
While we sprawled gladly by, cajoled
By beauty's long-lashed day
...and whispered pretty phrases there
and scrawled our touch soft, slow
Through laughing breezes ere the air
Grew somber with your snow

November, you are a loner
The flower and the bee
Cannot remain to suffer long
Your assigned agony
And we, like all the posies
Blush to admit the truth
But we prefer the roses, you
Are simply too uncouth

We try to brave the gale you flail
And find the good in you
While you slap our faces pale
And vex us with your hue
Of blue-gray low-flung heavens hung
Upon the afternoon
You scatter all the petals strung
On, once upon a June

Janet~

I'll Be Up To My Elbows in Dish-soap Suds...

PAD Challenge day 24:For today’s prompt, take the phrase “I’ll Be (blank),” replace the blank with a new word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem.

I'll be up to my elbows
in dish-soap suds or such
when you come a-wafting
with a lover's touch,
with a lover's whisper
with a lover's lure
You taunt in glimpses
I cannot endure
Until I relent,
dry my hands
Then, my dear
Just like a bubble, pop!
You disappear

Muse is a rebel,
A charmer, a ruse,
Lost in the silence
but quick to seduce
me in the middle
of life's noisiness
She sparkles and glitters
like fool's gold, I guess
for as I come running
with pen poised to write
Poof! she swishes
the words from
my sight

I'll be a soldier of ink
til I die
...as the mind thinks
so the pen must cry
For how can one suffer
the weight of a word
yet never uncover
the poem it stirred?
Oh, loveliest vexing
of you, lover's touch
when I'm up to my elbows
in dish-soap 
and such...

Janet~

Self Cannot Love...

PAD's two-for-two Tuesday challenge is to write a love or anti-love poem. 

We have a way of getting in the perfect way of it

Self is a bossy darling looking out for number one

But if we should decide to not ‘seek our own’ a bit

Then we should be prepared and plan to change our plans often

‘Love does not seek its own’ nor groans as it unclenches fists

Its utter selflessness baffles the best of us at times

Self does not go gentle into the good night's purple mists

But oft resists the hills that love insists its servant climbs

Oh Love, how do I love thee, let me count the countless ways

Ah no, for self is dumb-struck by your keen, relentless proof

And blushes ‘neath the honesty of Thy unjudging gaze

As love forgives the shortcomings where Self would stand aloof

Self cannot love in, of itself, or thus forgive the same

Love is divine, its very nature God Himself revealed

Self is a beggar dependent upon Love’s Sacred Name

By which all men are saved and every Self-affliction healed

© Janet Martin

But, Love

 PAD Challenge day 25: Two-for-two Tues.
Write a love poem.
Write an anti-love poem.


 Image source

The Want of it cries in streets
And tears the night apart
The mind for all its airs competes
With matters of the heart

The heart cannot pretend
Its need a groaning wail
Where everything is nothing, friend,
Without it; touch a grail

...of everlasting thirst
Its cup a thoroughfare
Of  hopeless hunger, reason cursed
With uttermost despair

For self cannot please self
Nor its own lover be
Ah Love; Thy force within us swells
In holy mystery

And Love will never fail
Proved once by nail-pierced hands
Yet he who simply takes and takes
Will never understand

The wonder of it all
Perplexes how we live
For love's first-fruit is not in what
We keep, but what we give

...and even givings' price
Will never be enough
If the motive for sacrifice
Is anything, but Love

Then what is Love and who
Can its full wonder know?
Ah, love is God and God is love
And by His grace we go

Janet~

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." John 13:35

Roasted Pork Sandwich

She watches him; the hunger of life in every bite

While bread and pork and gulps of milk amuse his appetite

They feed the fire that feeds the dream that winks within his eye

Where time meanders like a stream, slow through middle July

She envies him a little for the gusto of a quest

He cannot fully name yet ever tugs within his breast

His vision still untarnished by a road of what-has-been

His feet point ever forward, eager to be seventeen

She smiles a little smile to see him gobble bread with ease

Unhindered by the brutish yoke of cost or calories

And he cannot yet fathom the intensity of this;

How tick and tock can gently lock away this youth of his

…and so she watches him and tries to sear upon her heart

The image of a mannish boy hunched over bread and pork

While planning plans, untethered by the sorrow of the clock

…for mother knows the highs and lows of little tick and tock

© Janet Martin

He came home last night ‘starving!’ he said, and wondered with an impish grin ‘would mother make a sandwich?’ and she did…