Wednesday, August 8, 2018

Sh! Let's Listen to the Rain!


One of my top ten favs… much-needed-rainy summer morning!





Suddenly we slip on slippers
Sip that second cuppa slow
Tempo of teeny tap-dancers
Putting on a first-class show

Suddenly a trillion runnels
Run where yester-dust swirled up
Pitter-patter, precious jewels
Filling pond and petal-cup

Suddenly the whir of traffic
Dons the shush of plush footwear
Hunger humbled by the music
That tumbles in answered prayer

Suddenly we feel at home, oh
Rain-rhapsody, what a thrill
Rousing in the pen a poem
That no strictest scold can still

Suddenly, summer seems slower
Laughter laps up heaven’s tear
Taming haste of come and going
With the taste of Now and Here

© Janet Martin

Yet...


 Have you noticed
...how much earlier Day is turning in?!
But, it isn't time to say farewell to summer...yet.
Isn't 'yet' one of the most happy-sad words in the English vocabulary?!
(depending on what it is hinged to)
It suggests there is still more to come!

 I have not had my second coffee...yet



“Isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it... yet?”
L.M. Montgomery


I can’t bear the thought of it…yet
The way Past keeps moving in
Mapping moments, happy, haunting
To primed canvases of skin

I can’t think about farewell…yet
The way Time tugs at the heart
Twisting touch and taste to echoes
Where soon three seasons apart

...summer will be heaped and gathered
Death, a leafless silhouette
Etched upon the early twilight
I can’t think about it…yet

© Janet Martin

Tasting August


For me, a southern Ontario-an, I think August is Time's Magnum Opus







August drizzles days with sunshine
Expectation is fulfilled
Where Queen Ann’s lace fringes fence-lines
Golden fields are flower-frilled
Where the cricket tunes morn-noon-night
Where cicadas drone and buzz
Where leaf-canopies hide sunlight
Where sow-thistle turns to fuzz
Where the garden blooms with supper
Where earth’s cupboard overflows
Where we linger, summer-lovers
Hooked on anything that grows

August sizzles on the sidewalk
Startles us with scorching heat
Lures us to the cooler climate
Of shade tree or pool-side seat
There to swab the salty rivers
Trickling down face, neck and backs
There to revel in the favors
Of words like ‘chill’ and ‘relax’
There to mourn the quickened murmur
Rife with life’s soft severed strings
There to celebrate sweet summer
 And the simple gifts it brings

August melts like minty ice-cream
Pools in petal-passion spent
Fools us with a blue-sky daydream
Then we wonder where it went
Treats us to timeless traditions
Heatwave ripples, goldenrod
Wheat-field stubble, watermelon
Sunsets hand-painted by God
Flowers fading, apples plopping
Plum-pear-peachy ecstasies
Ripe tomato with a topping
Of black pepper if you please

August unravels red roses
Often stopping us mid-stride
To appreciate the moments
Sparkling on time’s hasting tide
Where morning to morning meters
What will soon be out of reach
Where we surf a surge that peters
Like a wave washed to the beach
Make the most of almost morrow
Where each flower tolls a bell
Where August is the sweet sorrow
Leading to summer’s farewell

© Janet Martin


Tuesday, August 7, 2018

To Summer's Guests






Be your own guest. where life’s best, summer-living
Is giving grand reasons to get out of bed
Come; take an hour to get reacquainted
With friendly-faced flowers, gold, purple, pink, red

Take a lake-break where its lay laps the skyline
For soon gales will lash silver stars to white froth
Be your own guest; rest a bit between pages
Study the fine fretwork of green-whispered cloth

Love, joy and peace is a garden in August
Bursting with bloom after warring with weeds
Fruit laden baskets, still-life masterpieces
Butterflies bobbing over thickets and reeds

Work with awareness of what waits, my darling
Spend time, not money where summer spills free
Linger where cricket-song serenades gardens
Do three-hour picnics beneath an old tree

Love while life grants you the dance of a season
Joy is far more than a three-letter word
It sings in flowers where peace paints a picture
That fills summer’s framework with tincture soon blurred


© Janet Martin

Poetic Blooms has swung wide the garden gate once more...
Wanna join? Free to poets of all ages and stages!
this is written for the prompt; 



Monday, August 6, 2018

Awe-gust...






Its wind is a fellow, mellow and footloose
Its footpath is yellow with stubble and dust
Its limb like a cello, chestnut and chartreuse
Rousing in poem-primed pens, wanderlust

Its ‘doth’ spread on cloth of Queen Ann’s lace and clover
Of Moth-wing staccato on screens after dark
Where dusk’s peach-plum curtain shrouds earth like a lover
Gathering his most-beloved to his heart

Its salver is set with salty-sweet surprises
Its poplar tress quivers on rivers moon-beamed
Where ebb and flow sea-song, red sunsets and rises
Create paradises, half-held, half-dreamed

Its Want fulfilled in guilt-free celebration
Of wandering where gardens laugh like a child
Happiness spills a sky-wide invitation
Blue touching down where sunflowers run wild   

August is like living inside a poem
Cricket-choirs lure us outside Duty’s gate
Crushed chamomile teases nostrils where roaming
Takes us from tasks that will just have to wait

This is the hand filled with Time’s grandest torment
A friendly forever that flowers and wings
After the purple and gold of the moment
Into the fabric of soft-echoed strings

This is the landscape of wildflowers tattered
Where soon summer starts to surrender her crown
August arousal all tousled and scattered
Its glory-days gone like glint of thistledown

© Janet Martin