Observe If You Please...

Observe if you please, this lease called life

How it can steal one’s breath-by-breath

Until its loaned laughter-love-strife

Leaves nothing to be done, but Death

Observe if you please, through centuries

How many have not met with this fate

Therefore the wise revere life's lease

And prepare for Death before it is too late

© Janet Martin

Toward The Thing That Matters Most...

 

For the last six hours Time's jars are spilling howling gales of ice and snow... 

 

This is what the past few hours have sounded like...ice pelting windows

Time tips the jars that splay the way

Toward a a sure, surreal Someday

That dwarfs this place where people are

And heaven’s myriad of stars

What really counts is often hid

‘Neath what folk say they said and did

 Forgetting in Time’s rise and fall

The Thing that matters most of all

So what of minor This or That

Like where the price of Stuff is at

Soon Time will set its charges free

In exchange for eternity

This boulevard of howling gale

Of sun that sets and ships that sail

Tips us toward a common goal

Where earth enfolds all but the soul

© Janet Martin

About That Bold, Old Clock...and Me

That obstinate, remorseless clock

Sits staid upon the shelf

While I learn all the galling truth

About myself

Futile to revile; hurl its taunt

Into the deep of night

For Time is not intimidated

By dark or light

Its steadfast chime a pantomime

Of bitter with the sweet

This tick-tock-tick-tock Thing called Time

Grants no repeat

So, stand up straight and tall or else

Crawl small beneath the shelf

That holds the clock that bold unlocks

The truth about

Myself

© Janet Martin

While Marveling at Moments...

Time strums the air with hours

Clad in common coloring

So, sometimes we don’t notice how

It changes everything

We, caught up in the wonder

Of discovery and such

Are often quite unconscious of

Its commandeering touch

While marveling at moments

Destined to settle in place

Like tombstones bearing epitaphs

That none but thought can trace

We drink the wink of seasons

And we think we are still young

While life’s love-longing laughter melts

Like sugar on the tongue

…and suddenly Time jars us

To its touch and we admit

Bewildered disappointment at

The subtle-ness of it

For Time strums air with hours

Clad in common coloring

It scatters years like flower-tears

...summer, fall, winter, spring

© Janet Martin

This Caught-in-the-Middle...

Time just keeps marching right on, doesn't it?

Christmas comes...and goes.

Do you ever get that caught-in-the-middle-of-it-all feeling? 

The bottom corner is my 'cheers' with a Christmas-morning coffee on the deck in the sun!!!

In these parts that is most unusual!

This network of moments

Like still-life applause

Soft-binds in its passing

What is to what was

These brushstrokes of Being

Do not disconnect

But blends us to paintings

Echoes resurrect

This caught-in-the-middle

Of will be and was

Reminds us to cherish

Each breath-space because

…this tick-by-tock measure

Which moments beget

Are tints in a picture

Not finished yet

© Janet Martin