November-love

Maybe it is your hue of mulled-blue, empathetic-gray

Maybe it is the way you hold summer’s spun gold at bay

Or maybe it’s your brooding wake of being caught between

The hunger of Becoming and the ache of what has been

When we were younger, love, the dreams we dreamed seemed out of reach

But now a season disappears like waves washed to the beach

And what seemed intangible and impossible, oh my

Slips through our outstretched fingers like a raindrop or a sigh

I love you; your sere stance seems to suggest you love me too

Though some insist that you are nothing but sorrow come true

Still, something in the way your wind-song strums the leafless tress

Makes me feel like a quite belong in your strange loneliness

Maybe it is the color of your once much younger eyes

Maybe it is the valor that remains though summer dies

Or maybe it’s the way your slip your whispers through my moan

But something about you, November, feels like coming home

© Janet Martin

You Always Leave...me to November

 PAD challenge day 1: write a stay/leave poem/poems

To know joy

Is to know grief

You always leave

An echo-land

Of fallen leaf

And lemonade reprieve

While, on the fringe

Of what once was

Waits what will be

The loss of you

Sweeter because

Of words like ‘we’

You always leave

Futile to grieve

Your stricken form

The corpse of summer

Lies in leaves

Of echo-storm

The aster

Cannot master

More than you or I

The wraith-like Chief

That scatters leaf

Beneath the sky

© Janet Martin

Way To Go

 Happy Nov. 1st!

This means Writer's Digest PAD (poem-a-day) challenge is here!

 

For today’s prompt, we’ve actually got a two-for-Tuesday prompt. So pick one, combine both prompts into one poem, or write two (or more) different poems. Here are the prompts:

• Write a stay poem. A poem about staying put, not leaving, and/or dealing with someone (or something) that refuses to leave. Or…
• Write a go poem. Fans of The Clash probably know which song prompted today’s prompt. But yeah, this is basically the opposite of staying–you know, going.

Stay, go

Ebb, flow

Yes, oh,

Perhaps…no

Dark, light

Wrong, right

May, might

Beg, fight

Tip, spill

Empty, fill

Hollow, hill

Heat, chill

Shoes, socks

News, clocks

Keys, locks

Trees, rocks

Stand, sit

Rest a bit

But don’t quit

Just do it

Bloom, fade

Broom, spade

 Bought, made

Hoard, trade 

Sing, dance

Bring aunts

Romance...

Take a chance 

Dirty, clean

Flirty, mean

Pretty, preen

Seventeen

Do, don't

Will, won't

Should, shan't

Could, can't

Love, hate

Settle, debate

Hurry, wait

Early, late 

Drive, walk

Be quiet, talk

Compliant, balk

Book, dock

 

Dream-dust

Wanderlust

May, must

Pray-trust

Splish-splash

Coast, crash 

Pause, dash

Keep, trash

Nope, tried

Cope, glide

Hope, hide

Steamed, fried

Take, leave

Braid, weave

Break, grieve

Wake, heave

Fast, slow

High, low

Stay, no

I must go

Crawl, fly,

Laugh, cry

Shout, sigh

Live, die

 

© Janet Martin

The American Dream...(a week before the election)

 the above is a sermon preached by Peter Marshall   
Click on the images to enlarge.
I realize this is a bit of a read but even a page or two leaves much for the reader to ponder.
 It seems this message is even more relevant now than then!
and not only for Americans.
This applies to all of us who enjoy freedom!
In a week is the American Election...
then a few days later Remembrance Day.

War,
like blood-stained thunder roared
and strew death in its hellish wake
where buttercups and daisies nod
in innocence on
unmarked graves
as generations foreign to
the horrors
forefathers endured
loaf on street-corners
mindless of
the freedom
sacrifice secured
while clink of coffee cups, laughter,
spills to the bustling boulevard
that once ran red
where lost life bled
to build a dream
and it was hard
We ought to hold its
banner high
Freedom,
bought not with hate,
but love
and with the cost
of much life lost
...we NEVER want
to lose sight of

...or have we?!

Janet Martin

Last-Day-Of-October Postcard

Morning

Afternoon

 Dusk...

Nature’s mantle is frayed; its tatters splayed beneath our feet

Autumn’s auburn-tinged guerdon drains the garden of its lark

Where stomping grounds of summer sleep, like a deserted street

And earth is like a courtyard or market-place after dark

When all the shops are closed but still the scent of Living wafts

Pungent, the dust soft-settled and the noise of barter stilled

Its fruit thereof is garnered into root-cellars and lofts

As Autumn cloaks the air with ambience of quest fulfilled

While we, the workers linger, roving skylines with our eyes

A-wonder at the deftness of time’s Ferris-wheel-like flight

It thickens limbs with bud then leaf, then leaf-by-leaf demise

Surprising us anew by its voracious appetite

And like a dirge, the winds converge and moan outside the door

The brittle aftermath of summer scuttles ‘cross the yard

Where nature’s harp is laid; futile to plead for an encore

Earth is a masterpiece; last-day-of-October postcard

© Janet Martin

While Winds Cajole and Seasons Flow...

It was a point-and-shoot-instant-masterpiece morning!

Holy, the toll

That strips the soul

While winds cajole and seasons flow

While softly sweeps

Fall's leaf-strewn deeps

Out to yon skyline rife with snow

Still, still the will

Of winter’s chill

Seeps into Time’s consonant stride

A seamless guile

Of nod and smile

And dozing by the fireside

Hush, hush the rush

Of dry leaf shush

-ing earth, encumbered with ado

While breath by breath

Each daily death

Abbreviates Time’s avenue

Tick-tock, tick-tock

The sky-wide clock

Chimes blush, then blue, now warm, then cold

And we forget

The Awesome Yet

Hinged to its pendulum of gold

With holy toll

It strips the Whole

Until, until all that remains

Of skin and bone

And grin and groan

Is the Unseen that breath constrains

© Janet Martin

'God of the seasons and sky,

You have always been holding my life' (from above song)