Where Apple Trees Are Blooming...

The cannons cease and the darkness falls,

And those fluttering things are men. Edgar A. Guest

Phoenix Rising invites us to use another poets words to inspire our own. 

 

The orchard is a palace where the apple trees are blooming
Nature fulfills promises that only spring can keep
Cold autumnal deathbeds after winter's icy grooming
Spawns a metamorphosis where fields of flowers sleep

I stroll the early morning where the lilacs are adorning
Twigs that seemed but lifeless sprigs before awakening
Our oohs and aahs and the applause of tongue-tied beggar-barons
Contentment's luxury is free and not a purchased Thing

...And I can't help but think of those who fled with almost nothing
Save the clothes upon their backs and children in their arms
Never mind that skies are kind and apple trees are blooming
Evil has no season;bent on ugliness that harms

Here among the song of birds and freedom bought with bodies
Hope is juxtaposed like spring, with suffering and death 
And mingled with the virgin hues of greens and blues, gold, purple
Runs the blood of fallen comrades yielding their last breath

The cannons cease and the darkness falls and those fluttering things are men
And boys and girls that will not see another spring again

Janet~

Lest We Forget...

Easy Service

When an empty sleeve or a sightless eye

Or a legless form I see,

I breathe my thanks to my God on High

For His watchful care o'er me.

And I say to myself, as the cripple goes

Half stumbling on his way:

I may brag and boast, but that brother knows

Why the old flag floats to-day.

I think as I sit in my cozy den

Puffing one of my many pipes

That I've served with all of my fellow men

The glorious Stars and Stripes.

Then I see a troop in the faded blue

And a few in the dusty gray,

And I have to laugh at the deeds I do

For the flag that floats to-day.

I see men tangled in pointed wire,

The sport of the blazing sun,

Mangled and maimed by a leaden fire

As the tides of battle run,

And I fancy I hear their piteous calls

For merciful death, and then

The cannons cease and the darkness falls,

And those fluttering things are men.

Out there in the night they beg for death,

Yet the Reaper spurns their cries,

And it seems his jest to leave them breath

For their pitiful pleas and sighs.

And I am here in my cosy room

In touch with the joys of life,

I am miles away from the fields of doom

And the gory scenes of strife.

I never have vainly called for aid,

Nor suffered real pangs of thirst,

I have marched with life in its best parade

And never have seen its worst.

In the flowers of ease I have ever basked,

And I think as the Flag I see

How much of service from some it's asked,

How little of toil from me.

Edgar Albert Guest :

Daylight Slips Where Air Eclipses Time's Ellipses...

Daylight slips where air eclipses Time’s ellipses ethereal

Sky-lines etched like charcoal sketches stretch blue shadows long until

Darkness covers loners, lovers; morrow hovers soft, aloft

Where the charter of an hour never barters with the clock

Midnight’s morrow with its sorrow none can borrow of its ilk

Dew and dust anoints the Must that God appoints to us; Time’s silk

Like an ocean in slow-motion washes over twilight’s world

Daylight slips, darkness eclipses the ellipses dawn unfurled

Morning offers merchants, scoffers, beggars, coffers fresh, unfilled

In the quiet echoes riot where the dark of night has stilled

Tussles with the hustle-bustle rubric of Time’s gossamer

Daylight slips where the eclipse of past, present and future blur

© Janet Martin

'May' Poets

Sometimes I leave a poem out

To share with them

They grunt a response

To let me know

They read it

…sort of

Then ask

‘What’s for supper?’

Sometimes I point out

The shapes of leaves

New born, etched

On May’s dusk

They nod and

Continue discussing

That

‘Really good song by so-and-so’

Sometimes they make

My heart stop

Right there

In the middle

Of Ordinary

As they say, ‘look Mom,

Look at the way the sun hits those trees,

Isn’t it cool?’

© Janet Martin

The Person that We Are...

I can almost here our bare feet splashing through the dust, dashing from beyond the tree-line in the photo below,  to the top of this hill to get a closer count of the freight train cars, then ambling back the way we came, arguing about how many there were...Those children and that railway are long gone.(back then this road was silky dust in the sun and slippery mud in the rain before it became a graveled and busier through-way for farmers.)

Was it not farther than this?! 

I feel like a stranger standing on the echoes of Then. It seemed like a world away when mother's permission allowed us to 'walk to the little tree or the creek,(it still sleeps in that dip) for the best peanut-butter and soda-cracker picnics known to little girls:)

We come from where we’ve been

And whether near or far

Life shapes through what we’ve done and seen

The person that we are

The person that we are

Is ever subject to

The highs and lows that jive and spar

To shape our points of view

To shape our point-of-views

We draw from difference

For I have never worn your shoes

Or your experience

For your experience

And mine, the done-and-seen

Patterns pursuit and consequence

We come from where we’ve been

We come from where we’ve been

And where we’ve been thus far

Creates from life’s gray-gold-blue-green

The person that we are

© Janet Martin

…but no matter where we’ve been, we began in the hands of our Creator and we will end in the hand of our Creator. 

This little ‘in-between’ shaping the person that we are, is never very far from Him. 

God’s love for all of us is our common birthmark, for from Him, through Him and for Him are all things.To him be the glory forever! Amen.
Rom.11:36

What you see of me is the shape of my skin

God and me see the person within

No matter what happens, He is never far

From the becoming of who we are 

Love Now!

Love now, for who knows how many todays we still have left

Before we bow our heads to mourn upon a grave, bereft

Love now; there is no guarantee beyond it save this, death

Thus we should love each other with each precious, gifted breath

Love now, do not hold back what we are able to out-pour

For even now death comes a-stealing to somebody’s door

Love now, tomorrow might be too late to state the unsaid

When all that we have left of love are memories we’ve made

© Janet Martin

My mother-in-law lost a dear friend and neighbor today; a mother, grandmother, great-grandmother. She touched oh, so many lives in her lifetime and will be dearly missed. We should look around and love now for now is all we have. 

I remember my Grandmother often cautioning her grandchildren 'the old will die but the young can die' reminding us to value life and love and to be ready when That Last Awesome Call comes.