Thursday, December 27, 2018

Past-Tours or Pastures


 Sometimes something as simple as a small Christmas card can spark a shower of echoes...
where bliss of innocence never gives Time a second thought
(is the scene below not purely idyllic?!)

Can't you hear the creak of snow beneath the rudders of the sleigh,
the lilt of youthful voices stirring white silence...
the horses eager snort, as they break through pristine sweep 
showcasing the startling artwork of shadows!

New day, like morning’s child stretches and yawns; dawn turns time young
The weathered stead that twilight tethered is a foal once more
Where on the air an untouched stair of raring grace is hung
The space that morrow’s Thought will trace where Yet begets Before

Ah retrospect; a room that opens up its one-man view
As memories and echoes culminate to paint a scene
Where once upon a childhood ‘neath untarnished gold and blue
We peered through star-filled eyes to life, so rife with virgin green

Then time was on our side, it seemed and we forgot its haste
But kicked it in the flanks and urged it on toward the dream
A rider on a stead too docile for hope’s heady taste
We tore across wide open fell like geldings full of steam

…and somewhere in the rise and set of Yet, Was grew and grew
And fact insisted that we reign in foolish fantasy
While filling flawless air with all the pictures that we drew
While living in the moments making, shaping history

…while waking our senses to the truth we all must face
Time waits for no one, head held high with fire in its feet
And always young at daybreak where its diverse droves give chase
The proof of mileage tattooed on the rider in its seat

And somewhere in the process of learning’s kick and caress
The stars turn into dust pressed hard upon time’s beaten track
Where once-upon-a-childhood startles retrospect’s finesse
With happiness much humbler from fence-lines of looking back



© Janet Martin
 




Wednesday, December 26, 2018

Like Salt and Smoke


I'm blaming this poem on the moon...and other muse-like murmurs.

The full-moon hid by drooping lid of midnight’s charcoal-tinted verge
Ignites a toll within her soul that rolls like sea-song’s glinting surge
Across stilled sweeps where moon-glow seeps from hoary heights to shadowed deeps
Her heartbeat feels the velvet heels of yester-reels in bounds and leaps

And transports her, through silver blur back to the murmur of a place
No tender tug to strip the hug as past and present interlace
To pluck heart-strings of peasant kings with feathers from the wings of Flight
Where boys and girls like noise and pearls tripped through Her World and out of sight

She tips the flask that melts the mask that humble task and smile defend
And lets the ink that poets drink become a confidante and friend
The march of time in stiff-starched rhyme ignites a pantomime of tears
That fills the arc of moon-brushed dark with spark and ash of yester-years

The language of our utmost love covets the perfect flow and form
But breaks through bars in salty stars and takes the silent night by storm
Where naught can quell the soundless swell where Thought is caught in the riptide
Of tick and tock and click and lock, of clocks and closing doors flung wide

The moon has slipped into the crypt of onyx-dipped oceanic wave
The quiet aches where muffled breakers crash across time’s fresh-turned grave
Where what we have must always brave the raven stave farewells evoke
To poke the art pressed to Her heart with stings that smart like salt and smoke

© Janet Martin



  


On Keeping Christmas Going

 Let's Keep it going...the Love!


  And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; 
but the greatest of these is love.
1 Cor.13:13

A kind and sympathetic word, a smile, soft touch, a prayer
May seem so small against the kicks that love and life impart
And though we are still the same people should’ring the same care
Compassion sends a reverberation through chords of the heart

And makes care’s weight, still much the same, seem somewhat lighter now
And makes the day, though still unchanged, appear brighter somehow
Where our ‘each-other-ness’ of modest, mortal acumen
Makes the requests of love and life not quite so fearsome then

This slip of skin and bone is equipped to do what it must
This blip of grin and groan drips with invitations to trust
This dust-to-dust arrangement, though often it stings and smarts
Is softened by the kinder notes that cheer our heart of hearts

…a kind and sympathetic word, a smile, soft touch, a prayer
A simple ‘you are not alone’ while hope and heartache war
And though we are still the same people should’ring the same care
Compassion makes the melody much sweeter than before

© Janet Martin


Happy Day-After-Christmas Joy!


In Canada businesses are closed today for what is known as Boxing Day.
Happy Back-to-work-day, dear American Friends!

I was lamenting the fact that it's After Christmas and I didn't get cards, visits, etc. to everyone I had hoped to before...but if we want to make Christmas last all year then it is still not too late to show someone we care! 
Happy After Christmas Day/Joy! 

 Anticipation...
Togetherness aka, Enjoyment
then always, Afterward!


We must take Time
Right where we are
To touch-taste-live-laugh-love
Tomorrow today’s treasure
Will be sealed in bygone’s trove

Tomorrow
Today’s Now will be
A sparkle of spent gold
A little glint of History
Soft hinged to what we hold

©Janet Martin



Tuesday, December 25, 2018

A Christmas Wish (from our house to yours)




Today, for all those times it seems the best words go unsaid
I’d like to pen a little rhyme and write them down instead
For you to keep and look back on, part of a memory
A simple sort of Christmas gift preserved in poetry

“Thank-you for dropping by this porch, the ‘keep-it-up’ and such
Across the miles you bring your smiles and kind and gentle touch
I pray the Lord to bless and keep, for He is good and true
And may tHis joy and peace of Christmas reign the whole year through

Your quick words of encouragement, to you may seem quite small
But friend, I’d like for you to know I keep them, one and all
Then on those darker days that all of us have now and then
They come to me and whisper ‘don’t give up’ or ‘try again’

I’d like to wish to you and yours a Merry Christmas Day
And that you sense the love of God in life’s come-what-so-may
I’d like for you to know (though some of us have never met)
That you are loved; And pray this year may be our best year yet

God bless you as we celebrate the birth of our Saviour, Jesus!
With love,
From Janet Martin
(and family)