Important Business, This Poetry

PAD Challenge Day 28: For today’s prompt, take the phrase “Important (blank),” replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write the poem.

Important business this, the art

Of baring pieces of the heart

For stranger’s eyes to criticize

Or interpret, at least in part

Important business this, the dare

To splay heart pieces on thin air

For other lips and fingertips

To touch with much less thought or care

Important business this, the taunt

Of restless air requesting font

With lowly pen we trace its yen

And draw a poem from its vaunt

Important business this, the ought

That shapes a word that shapes a thought

That shapes a mind; ah, be not blind

To those who find what ink has wrought

Important business this, for we

Who teach not eyes, but hearts to see

As we lay bare on naked air

Heart-pieces shaped in poetry

© Janet Martin

Where Midnight Poets Drink...

Now daylight stills its riot

Dark spills to hills and glens

It pours in blue, blue quiet

Like ink to poet’s pens

Time’s flesh and blood appointments

That stole the day afar

Are sequestered in silence

And pinioned with a star

Darling, the miles between us

Are not too dark or deep

See how swift thought traverses

And keeps the pen from sleep

The traveler of star-dust

Wherever she may stray

Is not alone or lost, love

A pen will find the way

As, large and wide the midnight

Fills earth and sky with ink

An ocean, blue and quiet

Where midnight-poets drink

© Janet Martin

Topsy-Turvy April

 April Collage...

Somehow you keep us caught between

Beyond our years and seventeen

One day gray-cold, the next warm-gold

You lure brown hills into soft green

You tease us with first-flower hymns

Thread ruby jewels on bare limbs

Then kiss bud-brakes with lost snowflakes

Even while robin-chorus brims

You run your laughter through blue air

Then bellow like a hungry bear

You frazzle streams and dazzle dreams

You sing and dance like Fred Astaire

Somehow you keep us caught between

The way we are and seventeen

One day we’re old, the next young-bold

We follow you to hills, soft green

© Janet Martin

Lest I Miss Out...

 It was a late-getting-dishes-done evening after what I originally thought was going to be a long-walk-at sunset-evening. 

Instead, a long phone-call, Victoria sick, Matt home late and lingering, unusually chatty during his kept-warm-in-the-oven-til-he-got-home supper, back to comfort daughter who just threw up...and so on:)

Still, I wouldn't trade this evening(except Victoria being sick, of course!) for all the sunset walks in the world...

Lest I should grow immune somehow

To blessings of love’s common spoil

And I should count for nought the Now

That fills my hands with humble toil

Lest I should look across the way

And pine for that which cannot be

And miss the lovely little day

That God placed right in front of me

Lest I forget my have-and-hold

And become bold enough to fret

For someone else’s moment-gold

While treasure spills unnumbered yet

Lest I should overlook love’s prize

Wrapped in life’s simple and mundane

I pray thee Lord, open my eyes

For today will not pass again

© Janet Martin

Considering Future Heirs...

We are heirs of those

Who left behind for us

The aftermath of what they chose

Therefore it begs us thus

…to consider with care

The aftermath we choose

For every precious, future heir

That soon will fill our shoes

© Janet Martin