To Common Kings...

It was a 'simple things' day...

For all that life leaves to desire

Much is rendered in return

Its Best, dressed in plain attire

Tendered through lessons we learn

Once upon youth’s restless green days

We were sure that joy was more

Than the commonness of freeways

Leading to home-sweet-home’s door

My, how high we held the future

Life’s best days wrapped in its gleam

Until one day we grew wiser

And began to live the dream

For all that life leaves to desire

It bestows to common kings

Happiness that we acquire

By its wealth of simple things

© Janet Martin

Lest We Miss the Melody....

Slow down, the song of living lilts in day by day appeal

Each morning like a madrigal of mist-spun amethyst

Its hour, like a flower blooms then falls beneath a wheel

Of virgin compositions that we hardly know exist

Slow down and listen to the tune of moment-metered grace

Where haste of hungry days devours spring-bowers with ease

Its green-field hallelujahs turn to bronze; bygone’s embrace

Unwilling to relinquish anything save memories

The genesis of what remains dwindles with every breath

Its skylines running over with carols we often miss

Slow down; revere this prelude to life’s last performance, Death

Love's song of living lilts and tilts toward time’s farewell kiss

God grants us Chance; we should slow dance where seasons stilly sweep

And stun the sun that runs awry on twilight’s diadem

This band of marching footsteps should slow down its headlong leap

Lest we trample on melodies that will not play again

© Janet Martin

Memory-Machine...

Hellos and send-offs and yellows and blues

Dawn of a new day then twilight adieus

Thought, like a peddler of dreams fills our gaze

Before the treadle of Touch wields its ways

Over and under, through us, in between

Time weaves its wonder …a memory-machine

Sing a song, pray a prayer, shed a tear, smile

Nothing is anything but A Wee While

See how the tie that binds unwinds anew

Begetting threads from founts heady with dew

Before then after, the laughter of years

Runs through The Now that never disappears

Crumbs from a Table above our reach

Fall into frames filled with life’s learn-and-teach

Change our minds, change our plans, change our ways,

Change spills in constant allotment of days

Arranging with it, new pieces of art

Lent for safe-keeping deep, deep in the heart

Spring-summer-autumn then winter deploys

Seasons of sorrow, reasons for new joys

Hellos and send-offs and yellows and blues

Like buds that brim then break into adieus

Stirring us to revere what dusk will wean

From our touch to time’s memory-machine

© Janet Martin

Cut Down To Sighs...

 Tonight twilight sighs in tall, shadow-shaped goodbyes

Sighs oft size up the human heart

The art of hold-let-go

Can never quite prepare us for

Its paradise of ‘oh!’

Sighs sigh in universal tongue

Glad, sad or just because

A language of both old and young

For what is or what was

They speak of a mind set at ease

Of restless wanderlust

They gather up fond memories

And matters made for trust

They utter love, longing and loss

In soft, unspoken ties

Because the very heart of us

Is oft cut down to sighs

© Janet Martin

This poem was inspired by the previous poem which was inspired, I am certain, by all the things I should be doing (see photo of prev. poem) rather than penning a poem!

Tonight my sighs are spawned by
Duty of House
versus
Beauty of Dusk...
Prudence
versus
Wanderlust

(...the beauty of Duty wins.
I hate getting up to yesterday's chores)

Priceless, Precious, Plebeian Prize

Its prize oft sighs through us without much fuss, fame or applause

A moment-metered montage that we almost miss because

Love’s laws are such that touch is a master of common art

And humble handiwork showcased in halls of human heart

How hardly we have held It, then Today fades from time’s tray

To join its predecessors in the land of Yesterday

And all the artists of the world cannot return its vim

Nor claim the prize of it after the size of it grows dim

Happy is he or she who has begun to realize

The camouflaged appraisal of this ordinary prize

That easily we overlook if we dismiss the keel

Of day-to-day routine and mien of plebeian appeal

…but in the come and go, ebb-flow of morning to nightfall

Life renders to its spenders a prize fitted for us all

Fashioned by sighs and smiles, rationed in duty, love and strife

It unfolds through Awareness of the beauty of this; life

© Janet Martin