Like the Wind Shedding a Tear...

 Dusk is donning its cape early on this cold, rain-dreary day...

There is something akin to loneliness in you tonight

But to identify it truly, oh, I cannot, quite

The brooding of your tone vexes what thought cannot attain

…the blue of what has never been nor ever will again

And when you drape your cape beneath dusk’s low, cavernous deep

And when you come to draw me from the fringe of ‘almost sleep’

And when the night lays plush and still against the windowpane

I feel that which never quite was, yet, cannot be again

…and if you would draw nearer I could better see your face

To glean from its expression that which thought cannot quite trace

But you are always only near enough for ear to hear

The essence of your presence; like the wind shedding a tear

The melody that drifts through me when light of day has fled

Echoes the unlearned art of farewell without longing’s thread

Where love binds near and dear though warmth of touch is torn apart

Save for the certainty of you and me still, heart to heart

There is something akin to loneliness in you tonight

But to identify it truly, oh, I cannot, quite

The brooding of your tone vexes what thought cannot attain

…the blue of what has never been nor ever will again

© Janet Martin

"I love this weather", said Victoria as she splashed through the doorway and I laughed out loud because I understood her perfectly!

Reason Versus Feeling...

 “Natural affection only, of all my sentiments, has permanent power over me. Reason, and not Feeling, is my guide…”  Mr. St. John in the book Jane Eyre

Reason reprimands my want

Feeling vexes Reason

Thought, caught in between the taunt

Of goodness and treason

What I should, Reason would do

But bold interjection

Swaddles Feeling with excuse

And hand-foot objection

Nature’s law is kind because

It caters to Feeling

Reason causes us to pause

To sounder appealing

Feeling is a flighty wind

Never out of season

On one hand its change of mind

But on the other, Reason

Sometimes Reason tests me sore

In life’s wheeling-dealing

A vexatious tug-of-war

With the roar of Feeling

But to Reason without Feeling

Were bloodless affection

Let the two then mingle keenly

Rendering me human

© Janet Martin

Love's Metamorphosis

Trembling 

We seek you

And 

trembling 

we find you

And 

trembling, 

we give you away

Who knew that love in its beautiful Hunger could fulfill someone this way?

 Blindly we seek you and blindly we find you and blindly we give you away

Who knew that love in its beautiful blindness could restore true sight this way?

 Broken, 

we seek you

And broken, 

we find you

And broken, 

still, still 

you increase

Who knew 

that love

In its 

Beautiful 

breaking

Creates a 

Masterpiece?

© Janet Martin

These days there's a lot of talk about 'finding ourselves, being true to ourselves, following what WE want' but it flies in the face of what Jesus taught...He didn't say find yourself, but deny yourself ...

 Then he said to them all: "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.

 Luke 9:23

Dust-dancers

How swift Time’s moment-must

Draws timid feet to dance

The courtship of its fickle dust

A strange, fleeting romance

How smooth morrow ensues

What soon is yesterday

Foolish, the dreamer that pursues

What tick-tock tugs away

How amateur we are

Even experience

Is but a wily harbinger

Of untried ‘whence-to-thence’

Thus, in this little place

Of live-laugh-love-and-learn

We should anoint this dust with grace

For there is no return

…to its brief Before Death

Then God’s eternity

Come darling, steal my very breath

Ere time steals it from me

© Janet Martin

Hope Claps or Of First-Spring

This lapse twixt bud and bloom

In first-spring’s waiting-room

Where we anticipate the gate

Entwined with petal-plume

Inspires, not the mood

Of last-storms as they brood

But births the lilt of flowered kilt

In halls of hope renewed

This stance of ‘someday soon’

Of polished Brigadoon

Of ‘then’ and ‘when’ and ‘once again’

Dripping from yonder spoon

Evokes a pretty prose

Unfolding like a rose

In gardens where we stand and stare

At how lovely it grows

And though the wind is gray

Raw-tongued with winter’s fray

We, undeterred are sure we heard

A robin yesterday

And in this little lapse

Before nature’s climax

As first-spring waits at budded gates

Hearts dream and sing; hope claps

© Janet Martin

Don't you find your thought and conversation peppered with 'when', 'then' and so forth as we plan gardens, picnics and other pleasantries?