Unwrapped For Our Looking Pleasure

 

In this place of planted gifts

Of granted gifts

Enchanted gifts

In this grace of garden-gifts

And days studded with flow’rs

In time’s pretty pirouette

Of sun rise and shine and set

What we see is what we get

Out of summer’s hours

Take a look, a second look

A longer, closer

Third-fourth look

Summer is a picture-book

And fit for every age

Feel the thrill of living spill

From earth’s fount of hill and rill

Do not blindly wait until

Winter turns the page

© Janet Martin

Taking a little blogging break.
See you in a week or two:)

Of Scattered Stars

Night’s raven bud of slumber yields and spills its rose on skies and fields

The woes of man that ebb and flow are set on pedestals hope

For there is not a morning born that does not offer fresh appeal

Time’s gift soft-wrapped in purple mist then set on summer’s sanguine slope

Earth’s weather-beaten brow and clime beneath the ceaseless course of time

Is like a polished ornament, not flung but hung with holy thread

Into unfathomed galaxies; the Keeper of its season-chime

Does not lose sight of this blue dot but melts its dark with gold and red

See; He does not forget, no, no, but bends to kiss faith’s fault and flaw

Forgiving Past with Future, oh, what manner of love rends the deep

Where we of meek and mortal stance can hardly speak, filled with sheer awe

That God grants us deliverance and scatters stars beneath our feet

© Janet Martin

 Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed,
Because His compassions fail not.   

They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.

Lam. 3:22-23

Poetic Bloomings Prompt: write a summer dawn poem

Summer-Serenade

 Already half-way through July?!

My heart lurches a little as my favorite months fly...

Tonight we sat on the deck 'til after dark,

soaking in the summer-night soft moonlight serenade

Time pours through summer’s sultry sieve

Soft-swift it sifts its gifted plume

And splays its colors on the eve

That weaves fond memories with its loom

How fluid summer’s hours pass

We grapple with the bloom of them

Only to see upon the grass

Tatters scattered from summer’s hem

We bear witness to summer’s ways

Laughter and mourning intertwine

For soon the swoon of twilight splays

Like crocuses on heaven’s vine

The earth is full of green and gold

It holds the hope for days to come

When warmth is traded in for cold

After we bring its harvest home

Time pours through summer’s sultry eve

And leaves us fully glad and sad

Because we know soon we will grieve

The lovely summer that we had

© Janet Martin

On Learning Life's Greatest Simple Truth

 The older I get I find I want much less of things,

but much more of love

Today's Poetic Bloomings Prompt: something I have learned

To learn its utter worth, firsthand

We must tenderly miss

Someone we love to understand

How truly dear love is

I, if my mind is wide awake

Should always have enough

With a small loaf of bread to break

And somebody to love

Then, should the curse of complaint find

My mouth, oh Lord, reprove

Lest in my greed, wide-eyed and blind

I never learn to love

Love is life’s sweetest, sacred prize

Ah, pray we do not wait

While we trample Want’s paradise

And learn this truth too late
 

To learn its utter worth, firsthand

We must most dearly miss

Someone we love to understand

How beautiful love is

© Janet Martin

The Vale of All Things Past

Lines below from the narration of the movie How Green Was My Valley

"Everything I ever learned as a small boy came from my father and I never found anything too small or worthless that he told me. What he told me rings in my mind still."

"Someone would strike up a song…and the valley would ring with the sound of many voices for singing is in my people, as sight is in the eye."

"Memory; memory…strange that the mind will forget so much of what only this moment has passed yet holds clear and bright memory of what happened years ago…"

"There was never any talk while we were eating. I never met anybody whose talk was better than good food."

"You've been lucky, Hugh. Lucky to suffer, lucky to spend these weary months in bed, for so God has given you a chance to make a spirit within yourself; and as your Father pleases lamp to have good Light, so keep clean your spirit.
How So?
By prayer, Hugh.And by prayer I don't meaning mumbling or shouting or wallowing like a hog in religious sentiment. Prayer is only another name for good, clean, direct thinking.
When you pray, think. Think well what you are saying. Make your thoughts things that are solid and that way your prayer will have strength and that Strength will become part of you, body, mind and spirit."

"Out of the house and across the street as I had run a hundred times before…straight to Mrs. Turrel’s shop for a piece of that toffee you could chew for hours, it seems to me now, and even after it has gone down you could swallow and still find the taste of it hiding behind your tongue. It is with me now so many years later. It makes me think of much that is good and now is gone."

This poem inspired in part by lines from How Green Was My Valley

This vale that oft regales our thought

No fence or bound can know

It flows with blue forget-me-not

And summer's daisy-snow

It admits good and bad alike

And softens with its While

The bitterness of hurt and strife

To echoes with a smile

This vale is filled with days of yore

And even as we breathe

We sense the slipping of the hour

To lands none can bequeath

Beneath Time’s tender touch this vale

Relinquishes the tear

While mankind courts its Awesome Grail

Of faith mingled with fear

For, as each day is lent and spent

It passes through a door

Where none can thwart or circumvent

That which will be no more

Someday we’ll join the paling cast

And slip beyond the Now

Into the Vale of All Things Past

We’ll take our final bow

Then, when we leave this leaf-sheaf strand

To slumber in this vale

Pray we will fold old work-worn hand

As one who labored well

© Janet Martin