Kaleidoscopic Doggerel

 It's that time of year...letting Nostalgia have its say😘

Kaleidoscope of hope-hued gems

And disappointment’s diadems

Soft crown the brown and silver hems

Of Bygone’s burnished sweep

Time’s pattern of felled petals pressed

Like pastel-parchment, mist caressed

Into a heart-shaped treasure chest

Filled with what none can keep

Save between fingertips of thought

Like wisp of wind on moonbeam caught

Where hug and kiss soon ties a knot

With hands gentle, yet gruff

Because nothing can stay the same

All things return from whence they came

Where what we hold is but the flame

That twilight’s train will snuff

Darling, this daring doggerel

Of balladry where flowers fell

Like rainbow-shards to tune the dell

Taunts-haunts the bard’s keen ear

Torn between touch and letting go

Where summer green and winter snow

Melds into a tender tango

Only the heart can hear

This warp, weightless yet full of years

This galaxy of star-eyed cheers

And vagary dissolved in tears

…laughter and longing’s ilk

Throbs like the sob of lowered dark

Silent, save for dog’s far-off bark

And lone leaf strumming moon-beamed arc

With blades of steel and silk

© Janet Martin

Solace of Surrender

Fear is a predator that Faith will conquer!

Fear looks like this...

 ... to the little birdies at our feeders

Fear takes the fun out of love/life
It stalks it prey, paralyzing prayer!
But, as we pray Fear relinquishes its prey

Bigger than the storm before us

Greater than our deepest fear

Love’s Author never ignores us

Always and forever near

Waiting for our heart’s surrender

Waiting for our will to yield

To His Mercy, kind and tender

Through faith’s fire-tempered shield

© Janet Martin

 I sought the LORD, and he heard me, 
and delivered me from all my fears.
Ps. 34:4

Because This Much Is Clear...

These are the day’s we’ll look back on in days to come, my dear

Better and worse are soon immersed in past’s elusive sphere

And in the din of grit and grin and aspiration’s reach

We learn that what we earn returns with something new to teach

Aha, the law of life is such no one outgrows its school

Beneath the birth and death of touch we break its Golden Rule

While waking to the wonder of Mercy’s unflinching rod

Bequeathing to our blunder, dear, the tender grace of God

…where the spirit is willing, yes, but oh, the flesh is weak

And wisdom comes as humanness submits to reproof’s tweak

Where all that we can do, my dear, as year to year adheres

Is but to keep on keeping on and trust God with our fears

…and not give in to wallowing in quagmires of regret

Futile, the fumbling with a key to doors in Bygone set

But, bow the head instead, to pray, because this much is clear;

These are the days we’ll look back on in days to come, my dear

© Janet Martin

 But one thing I do: 

Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead...

Phil.3:13

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

 

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