Monday, June 30, 2014

Wild-rose





...and they coax her to 'come! Come to this mall and that mall and see what money can buy! Run to the coffers of jingle; fill your fingers with its lie... but she knows a mall of green field and blue sky where wealth is a wonder money cannot buy...

She is wild rose
Wandering
In a garden
Whispering
Muted things
Pen must descry
Of melody
Coin cannot buy

She is bond-servant
Of quill
Not by force
But her free will
Wild-rose wandering
The wind
In the willow
Understands

She is loyal
To the trust
Of a poet’s
Wanderlust
Wild-rose ever
She will be
Beggar-bloom
Of poetry

© Janet Martin

Amiss





Ah, we would wander quite amiss
If we forget to cherish this
Of moment-mist as day soft-kissed
Becomes the thing the night resists
Before the dark unveils its face
To grant another day of grace

Time’s showcase where life’s finer things
Tug season-tides and tied heart-strings
Would be an insult to the air
If we forget to linger there
To trace a hemline not of chance
But mercy-metered song and dance

Love, wrought within and God-beget
Illiterate, unlearned and yet
Like ether oceans unconfined
Perplexes heart and vexes mind
Rushing where God alone can see
Our wisdom-wanton misery

This universal longing dwells
Where Time's prescription never quells
The war of holding-letting go
And we, unlearned in things of soul
Covet, yet curse its gripping grief
Where love is both angst and relief

Yet, we would wander quite amiss
If we forget to cherish this
Of morning rolling like a wave
Across the utmost that we crave
Ancient, its virgin offering breaks
Anew upon past’s muted lakes

© Janet Martin

Sunday, June 29, 2014

Blue Somewhere





Somehow you know those things I know
Disguised as holding-letting go
When all the while in every mile
Life’s bittersweet of bygones grow
And where time drew apart the air
That held fragments of heart and prayer
I knew you knew and were there too
In azure hue of blue somewhere

J~

Some sentimental blue on a moody summer night...


With What We've Got





To envy someone else
For all that we have not
Is but to waste our very best
…we work with what we’ve got

We cannot rearrange
What gone-and-done has wrought
And all that we can ever do
Is work with what we’ve got

No one has everything
Though it may tease our thought
To think they do; ‘tis vain
We work with what we’ve got

Someday we will account
Not for what we have not
But for our everyday response
To work with what we’ve got

© Janet Martin

Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve Col. 3:23-24

Saturday, June 28, 2014

On Happiness


Time's Darling



The earth is full of green
And where its nuance glows
The bud unfurls its miracle
Of peony and rose

The air is like a stage
Where feathered choirs trill
To He who tunes each season-page
In spite of good and ill

The garden breaks its seal
Where seed, that wondrous thing
Before our very eyes reveals
What only God can bring

We walk beneath a tent
Of white and azure swoon
Goodness and mercy’s filament
Is palpable in June

Its winding afternoon
Kisses our quiet hurt
Where hidden springs embellish June
From fountains born of dirt

Come, taste the giddy song
Of lupine-laden love
Time’s darling does not linger long
In summer’s treasure-trove

© Janet Martin