Dear Year...(or, Learning the Art of Good-bye)

Mostly you move me with beauty of duty

Morning-fresh splendor and twilight-plush sigh

You spell the words to my life-story, darling

Mostly with hugs of hello and good-bye

My, how the eye is a cup holding rivers

My, how the heart cradles what Past endears

Mostly you move me with common anointing

Where tick-tock offspring shapes Time into years

Mostly you move me with measure of moments

Who knew a lifetime could fit into this?

Hand-holding, foot-slipping, laughter-tear treasure

Learning the art of your double-edged kiss

Tell me again where you go and how, darling

Did we not meet just a short while or so?

Yet you are poised for eternal departing

My heart whispers ‘stay’ while Edict orders ‘go’

Mostly you move me with love’s longing sorrow

My, how tomorrow overtakes today

Moving the meter of ‘Time left remaining’

Near, ever nearer to that Far Away

Hold me close, darling, before you must journey

Into that land from which none can return

Mostly you move me with unuttered yearning

For that which somehow I cannot quite learn

© Janet Martin

Pledge to a Poem

(This is the first white, well, white-ish December morning here this year...
But by the time the rain has run its course I think it will disappear)

Dear Poem,

I will strive to do you justice

Dress you in the cloth of word

Shape the sighing of your river

Into voice where thought, ink-stirred

Sights unuttered implications

Of a world beyond the cries

Of task's regimental duty

I will look into your eyes

…and soft-touch you like a lover

Sensing more than exposed skin

I’ll endeavor to uncover

The person pulsing within

And with patient, trembling fingers

I will brave fear’s leering curse

Dare to paint syllabic pictures

And impression into verse

Then, with pen bring into being

That which never was before

I will strive to do full justice

To the call of troubadour

As I draw you from a wellspring

Nectar waiting to become

Poured to page; clothed yet word-naked

To the title-ship of Poem

© Janet Martin

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