Lessons from the Birds

Like the lark

That fills the dark with song

Or the robin

That sings on a day, rainy-blue

Or the hummingbird

That drinks deep the nectar of life

Ah, we should try to live thus too

© Janet Martin

This antique-jar hummingbird feeder was gifted to me by some dear friends for my birthday a few weeks ago!
Thank-you, gals.
Your gift is appreciated by bird and bird-watcher:)

Brigadoon

Today marks the last day of school for Ontario's elementary students, and suddenly I heard the drone of locusts in willow arches overhead where my long-ago summer-girl days disappeared... 

'he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not' 

How large the summer days of childhood sprawled

Beneath bare feet its carefree pathways fell

Toward the future where a daydream called

And lured us from the brook and daisy-dell

Into that yonder due of no return

Where days seem bent on departure too soon

And every now and then we pause to yearn

For childhood’s swiftly-severed Brigadoon

Where, long and lean dusk’s shadows of farewell

Climb to, then through the place where echoes swell

How small the leap from there to here to there

It is hard to prepare for the unknown

Pity the one who has no time to stare

But pants headlong toward a cold gravestone

Though the rebirth of ancient summer charms

Abides; A rose is still a rose, oh my,

And in time’s daily death twilight disarms

With gold and draws its gate across the sky

Familiar panoramas disappear

Into the Brigadoon of Yester-year

We stand upon the centerpiece of life

Tomorrow, yesterday, ah, what are they

But chimerical, historical strife

Time’s most valuable asset is Today

And it will never come to pass again

This spending place of moments tries our hearts

With pieces of a picture, pleasure, pain

Like summer’s day, drops petals then departs

While we master the art of living well

And return to the brook and daisy-dell

© Janet Martin

Soft, Like Summer Snow

Hour falls asunder

Flower follows suit

New bud wakens wonder

Bearing fleeting fruit

Laughter filters sorrow

Present spills to past

Drawing from the morrow

Refills to its cast

Girl becomes a woman

Boy becomes a man

Mother hears an echo

‘Catch me if you can’

Sing a song of seasons

Round and round they go

Flowers, hours falling

Soft, like summer snow

© Janet Martin

Troubadour

From the fount of summer morning

From the inkwell of a flow’r

From the mountain and the meadow

And the sun and shadow bow’r

From the woodland and the moorland

And the never-land of dreams

From the lofty heights of triumph

And the lowly sorrow streams

From the hurt and dirt of living

From song and dance of youth

From the freedom of forgiving

And the changeless ways of truth
from the true-blueness of heavens

From the wellspring of a thought

From the laughter of a loved one

And the chatter of a tot

From the wander-ways of travel

And the fonder stays of home

Splays the Will that holds time’s gavel

And the quill that holds its poem

© Janet Martin

Of Each Newborn Day

Hail, hail the toll of morning’s bell

Our God did not forget

*The innocent brightness

Of a newborn day

Is lovely yet

From century to century

The dark dawn’s spark begets

And *the innocent brightness

Of a newborn day

Is lovely yet

Holy, holy, arise, my love

See what God’s grace hath let

Where *the innocent brightness

Of a newborn day

Is lovely yet

Time cannot dim the love of Him

Whereby its gauge is set

And *the innocent brightness

Of a newborn day

Is lovely yet

Arise, arise, for who can say
How many morns are left
Where *the innocent brightness

Of a newborn day

Is lovely yet

© Janet Martin

Inspired by *this line from a poem by William Wordsworth entitled Intimations of Immortality