To Time's Touch

In August you lie on my skin, sun-warm and flower-kind

In December you vex my grin with summers left behind

Still, ice-kisses pressed on my cheek remind me not to weep

But fumble with what dusk dismisses to past’s darksome deep

...because what was cannot return; and what waits, who can say?

Futile to ransack today's urn in search of yesterday

Thus, though we pine for zephyrs strumming vine laden with leaf

We drink the pink of snow-sunrises veiling slumb’ring sheaf

The hour, like a flower, unfolds, blooms, its shadow dims

And fades to nothing but the tune in bygone's hallowed hymns

Time's moment-gold we hold soon drifts in ashes cold and gray

December's embers snuffed like stars at dawn or summer's day

© Janet Martin

Of More To Come

Quixotic feet

Platonic mete

Bitter and sweet

Fleet pageantry

Macabre mime

Weaving with Time’s

Rhythm and rhyme,

A memory

Thorn-procured rose

Morn-secured pose

Dusk-obscured close

Yes-and-no’s clash

Windows and doors

Heavens and floors

Thugs, troubadours

My, what a splash

Perhaps, never

Secure, sever

Gone forever

…slippery sum

Of wonder-wars

Where yonder bars

Soft-spill star-jars

Of more to come

© Janet Martin

Songs on the Wind...

By tick and by tock Time’s doors open and lock

While, wide-eyed we hold and let go

And struggle to master the art of the clock

That vexes and appeases so

How slippery its spheres, shaped in soft smiles and tears

How fixed, its routine repertoire

By tick and by tock fills up days-seasons-years

White butterflies flitting through fire

Remiss is time’s good morning-to-goodnight kiss

This falling-while-learning-to-fly

By tick and by tock becomes a new what-is

And every hello, a good-bye

We fix our eyes on a prize beyond reach

‘Of what was and what waits to be’

Moving to a tempo that moments beseech

In a tick by tock balladry

It scars April hearts and sears smooth skin with roads

It leaves well-laid plans in its wake

By tick and by tock, star-like capsules explode

To settle in love’s tender ache

How hardly we held it and it disappears

A rhythm that none can rescind

By tick and by tock, slick half-breaths turn to years

And years into songs on the wind

© Janet Martin

Flood of Memories

 Our once-neighbours, now still friends from Nova Scotia visited  yesterday...

We enjoyed dinner and a flood of memories

"You're going to be an engineer someday" I remember telling the oldest 'tyke' as he didn't just play with a truck but flipped it over to try to figure out what made it go and how!

Last night we talked about university(yes! he is going for engineering:) and jobs they have, etc 

...and just like that the evening is a drop in the seasoned sweep of years

It does not swell in rivers rushing tangible and wild

But pours through doors and windows of the mind with seamless ease

To overwhelm thought’s present realm with echo-sweetened smiles

And dear unbidden tears stirred by a flood of memories

Those hours once we passed through with scarcely a second glance

Return, like masterpieces feather-brushed to galleries

Where no one else can see or smell the flowers of a dance

Fashioned, then framed forever in a flood of memories

Time’s common cares we bluster through and muster, through meek prayer

The faith to adapt plans and dreams to new realities

Will soon be kept in pictures swept to showcases of air

Where thought is overtaken by a flood of memories

How precious and tenacious is this tide of hear-and-now

Where dawn-to-dusk is like a canvas cradling ether seas

And we are all student-artists brushing the ebb and flow

Of love-and-lifeblood lessons to a flood of memories

© Janet Martin

Soft Morn

 Happy Day-after-Christmas! 

Hope it was/is a truly joyous one.

The soft morn is affixed to

The place that all moments run through

To join at eventide, time stayed

Brimming with choices we have made

The soft morn opens up a door

To graces unwitnessed before

Though often we have soiled its splay

Mercy replies with a new day

The soft morn wakens worlds with light

Hope buoys mankind’s broken sight

Where we would fall prey to despair

Without morn's way from here to there

The soft morn slips through stars to let

Time open jars not tasted yet

Mercy cascades, gold-gray-blush-blue

A gift we are beholden to

Come, then for this is a new day

The old is folded, done away

As to time’s common curves God grants

A morning soft with second chance

© Janet Martin

I couldn't post this morning-poem this morning because of no internet but the company responded promptly after I called...even on Boxing Day!