To Graduating Students...(or Students Working Toward 'Graduation')

Last night we attended the Commencement ceremony at E.D.S.S. to celebrate with the graduating class of 2015/2016. Our son Matt, is one of many who are moving on to begin writing the next chapter in their life-book. After listening to the valedictorian and principal's speeches, both of them thoughtful and inspiring, I find it encourages every 'student' to keep on giving their best!

One chapter behind you

A book yet to write

Then, pray God to guide you

And to grant insight

Soon you will discover

New lessons, my dears

Each day is a classroom

Full of teachers and peers

For we are all students

With honors to earn

Where wisdom and prudence

Takes much time to learn

Some days are a failure

While others we ace

As we climb time’s ladder

Grounded in God's grace

No matter our calling

No matter our age

We should give our all in

Each filling of page

And we should take pride in

What our book will be

For we are all writing

A legacy

© Janet Martin

Then Wail, oh Gale

Sometimes when the poem-well feels a little parched I flip open a book to see if anything stirs.

The first poem I came upon was a perfect springboard on this rain-wind-tossed morn...

Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Then wail, oh gale

that flings the rain

that flails the shuttered window-pane

that frames the seasons of the earth

that cradles fronds of death and birth

that from the swaddled seed will wing

the nuances of morrow’s spring

that feeds the hope that else would fail

within the lope of autumn’s gale

Then flicker, flame

that warms the chill

that charms fall's fame from stricken hill

that wore a gown of orange and red

before rogue-gales winnowed the thread

that cannot keep its virile vim

but falls asleep beneath the limb

that once upon a summer day

would tune the noon with crooning lay

Then weep, yon cloud

that shrouds the chaise

that hoards the leaf of ancients days

that cups within its muddy keep

the ruddy tatters, fast asleep

that beds the nucleus of flow’rs

that weds with red and gold-belled hours

the tides that tune the blinding gale

that soon the boon of bloom will pale

© Janet Martin

How About Now?

Click on collage, then right-click on view image to enlarge and re-live the memories:)

Looking back for all its lessons

Cannot, will not alter Now

Live and learning’s effervescence

Runs through Present's curtsy-bow

Wish and wanting does no planting

Looking does not push the plow

We can only work, my darling

With all we ever have; Now

Time, for all our bellyaching

Balances its Where-When-How

Always giving, with its taking

A new and unbroken Now

© Janet Martin

...so dear Bluejays, though Now may seem bittersweet we say Thank-you!
 for giving us post-season pleasure two years in a row.
What fun it was!
See you in the spring.

Always on the Fringe...

 Autumn grandstands wave wildly while waning hillside Hurrahs

Already winds of change are draining its gaudy applause

From Anne of Ingleside

The aptitude and fortitude and solitude of Past

Is like a landscape after summer’s blooming cape is cast

Aside; the tide of tick and tock, with unrelenting force

Dominates earth and all therein subject to its discourse

…and nothing can evade the Thing that seasons Seasons, oh,

The Past is like an echo-land brindled with letting go

Where we are ever on the fringe of it but never There

Though always moments in our grip slip to its thoroughfare

…while we grapple to learn to love what Present deems our lot

Then twilight takes and tenders to the trove of Afterthought

And we, betrothed it seems, to Becoming, cannot afford

To stand too long and gaze at vistas that once we adored

…or else we miss The Very Thing that waits to splash its ilk

In gray and gold upon the ether Hold of molded silk

Where aptitude and fortitude and solitude of Yore

Is always on the fringe of what we touch and where we are

© Janet Martin

 Here are the thoughts leading up to Anne's summation...

Two Rispettos or One Autumn Poem Entitled Silk-Thread Toll

Today Poetic Bloomings invites us to a write a Rispetto.

A Rispetto, an Italian form of poetry, (Italian:: “respect,” – plural rispetti, a Tuscan folk verse form) is a complete poem of two rhyme quatrains. The meter is usually iambic tetrameter with a rhyme scheme of abab ccdd. A Heroic Rispetto is written in Iambic pentameter, usually featuring the same rhyme scheme.

Fretwork of farmer’s field is felled

And fruit from laden leaf-looms culled

Spring’s framework to filled fathoms meld

Bud-promises plucked, pulled and hulled

Mist-trysts on frost-kissed climes amass

Like gilded glints of shattered glass

As glitter of forgotten wars

Bedecks earth’s heath in breath-wreathed stars

***

Time’s rubric is resolute, fixed

Season-ilk spirals, silk-thread toll

Of Birth, then death; a life betwixt

Its quantum woven through with Soul

Nothing new waits where Now, newborn

Baits gated brogue of morrow’s morn

Where wonder-lust and laughter-tears

Stirs soldered dust of yesteryears

© Janet Martin