Up And At 'Em... Giddyup

 Above lines from the poem Reveille by A.E. Housman

Once in a while I come across a poem that makes me utterly swoon...

This is such a poem!

I can't believe how often the morning-poem I sip with my coffee ties in with present-life! 

Matt started trade-school this week. One of the guys he car-pools with lives on a dairy-farm and he told me this guy chores before they leave at 7:00 a.m. Another of his class-mates works at our neighbor's dairy farm and yesterday he worked an 8 hour day/night at the farm after his school day...

I love a 'lad' who jumps up, not afraid of hard work! 

The last verse of the above poem, words to live by for all of us!

These fields don't look like this because someone stayed in bed...

 “A little sleep, a little slumber,
            A little folding of the hands to rest,”

      Then your poverty will come as a robber
            And your want like an armed man.

Prov.24:33-34

I've kiddingly said more than once sometimes it feels
like the hardest part of my day is going from horizontal to vertical...
as soon as I'm up you couldn't pay me to go back to bed, 

but WOW! while still snuggled there it feels SO good😴

Up and at ‘em, touch them toes down

Pry the lid from life at large

In the belly burns a fire

In the fingertips a forge

Look, oh lyricist of laugh-lines

Time enough is hasting by

Where the orb of early morning

Drinks the darkness from the sky

…where the pink ink of permission

Spills a Holy Signature

From the Author of creation

To the hero and the cur

Sack soon siphoned of its music

Bag of borrowed bric-a-brac

Saddles both beggar and chooser

On time’s one-way no back-track

Days are not a dime a dozen

Time is not a fortune free

Mornings are a gift from heaven

Offered without guarantee

Listen, can you hear the crashes

Where Time’s surf rolls gray-gold-blue

'ere this turf of dust and ashes

Soon collects its ordained due

© Janet Martin

Dusk Doggerel

When Brantley isn't horsing around with auntie or Uncle 

he likes to stand at the kitchen window and look out at the world.

            Tonight after supper as he stood there I wondered if he wondered where his world went...

Now trundles through the countryside

A drifter known as Eventide

His coat is velvet dark-blue-dyed

Soft, soft his footsteps fall

And in the ebbing light of day

While vesper’s benedictions play

Croft and hillside slip, slip away

Beneath a shapeless shawl

And all that we have left to see

Of this small day that used to be

Are memories of you and me

No drifter can rescind

He wanders up and down the street

Across bare fields once bronze with wheat

I hear him whistle, low and sweet

Or is it just the wind

He climbs time’s seasoned belvederes

And flings the coat he’s worn for years

Across a world that disappears

In windows framing black

Save ribbons trailing purple-pink

Along the paling tree-lined brink

He waves his farewell wand, I think

With starry bric-a-brac

© Janet Martin

Mighty Mite...

 *Something happened yesterday that reminded me to never-mind-the-mess-moments,

even when it looks like a toy-book-popcorn blizzard hit the house😏

(these pics taken after the popcorn was cleaned up:)

*...for all the slips, stumbles, scoldings, patience loss

the little lad could have mentioned, he told the bus-driver this!

(I picked up 2 older siblings of one of the little girls in my childcare yesterday after school)

Big Sister told me why she was laughing when they got off the bus

Bus driver: Do you have someone new picking you up today?

Little Brother: yup! Her name is Janet and she believes in God!"

and then, Big Sister continued, 'the bus-driver said, me too!'

That 'me too'  instantly changed how they regarded Bus Driver!

Our lives are shaped by moments...

masterpieces are made with brushstrokes and breath-notes!

Let's be mindful artists/composers!
Because
There's a lot at the mercy of moments...

Much, much more than just mere moments

Melting ‘neath sun’s heat, like snow

Meting out in breath-sized morsels

Much more than we’ll ever know

More than muted mist of morning

Kissed with whispers, bronze, gray, pink

More than birth to death, my darling

Falls the thrall of moment-ink

Far beyond triumphant touchdowns

Or the frowns which test our grit

From a moment long-forgotten

Someone hearkens back to it

Then, a moment seems quite sacred

What a weighted mighty mite

As its melds to printed pages

And ages long slipped from sight

Until someone tries the footing

Tastes the pudding, stirs the dust

Stumbling-blocks and stepping-stones, love

Poured into a moment’s Must

What a chariot, this war-room

Battle-plans subject to how

Choices fill the mite of moments

With the height of here and now

© Janet Martin
 

Un-common Wealth on Common Ground

 We all growl like bears;
    we moan mournfully like doves.

Isa. 59:11

Who can one’s worth or wisdom prove?

Or life’s full fortune count

The giver and the taker, love

Supplied by the same fount

Allowances of day to day

Provide a common wealth

God first gives what He takes away

Man owns nothing himself

…but owes his very breath to He

Whose grant we supplicate

And offer up Want’s frantic plea

That often bids us wait

…as Mercy drips like a fresh peach

From chins of much demand

Where both giver and taker reach

Into the selfsame Hand

For what we give He gives us first

God holds the spoon we lick

Where we would all be misers, cursed

With love of purse and brick

But for kind pricks and kicks to wake

Us to the mouth we feed

Ah, both giver and taker break

A loaf of common need

...and therefore have one common boast

No pompous look-at-me

For giver-taker’s least and most

Is simply what we see

The Hand that cups the sands of time

And all its peopled noise

Gives giver and taker the clime

Of living’s sorrow-joys

© Janet Martin


Thinking of all you Iowa-ans digging out of a blizzard...
(how do I know? Hubby is headed that way with a load of pigs needing unloading today
but he was told last night they have three days of digging out to do!!)
H-m-m-m!

sidenote: Jim just called (afternoon) Pigs delivered.
...and he said, the pigs look better than he does! lol!

Our precip came in rain and rain and MORE rain!!!

There's something about a rainy day that finds its way to a poet's pen
a musician's melody,
and a day-dreamer's dancing-feet,
so it seems...

Singin' in the Rain Gene Kelly