Showing posts with label farewell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label farewell. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

January Farewell Lyric

 A few final, farewell January mementos before February takes center stage


We had 3 sunrises in January; on the 4th, 21st & 22nd...













Though you are infamous because of temps that chill us to the bone
And gales that wail and howl and make us humbly glad for home-sweet-home
And though the farmer does not miss your tricks of frozen pipes and taps
You still spill much to love; your bliss of Jack Frost art, your pristine wraps

Your cooler pace than when we chase spring-summer-autumn’s urgent task
Your gratis shadow-show poured flawlessly on snow, from yonder flask
Your still-life ebb and flow of tundra; white and blue capped sense of seas
Your subdued quietude of muffled, snow-truffled brook-song and trees

Your feathered patron-jam at feeders filled with ceaseless flickering
Your yellow flash as sparrow-hawk crashes carefree bird-bickering
Your pure delight as white-on-white leaves speechless troubadours agape
Your happiness, that we confess is as simple as tea and cake

Your first-month-of-a-new-year-status, soon stripped of its pedestal
By a momentous apparatus that drains every season-full
Drains the outdoor rinks of pink-cheeked youngsters with star-sparkly eyes
Drains the eaves of ‘cicle-brickle, drains the bite from squall-rent skies

Drains winter’s hour of its power to hold gold and green at bay
Drains the bud to leafless lintel, drains bluster’s lackluster gray
Dear January, if we could I doubt that we would hit ‘repeat’
Yet in your wake you leave an ache for lyrics lost beneath Time's feet 

© Janet Martin


Your still-life ebb and flow of tundra; white and blue capped sense of seas



Jack Frost garage floor art!!









Tuesday, January 30, 2024

Of Payoffs In Waiting (or Something About a Gaping Grave)


Yesterday my dad's oldest brother (and Wayne's father) was laid to rest.
He is an uncle fondly remembered by his nieces and nephews
 for his good-natured, uncomplaining and optimistic outlook
 though his life had many hardships!
We cousins are in a stage where funerals have become our meeting place
and with these gatherings comes the solemn reminder
our childhood playmates are not children anymore,
all of us under the influence of Time's unflinching touch 
and we are reminded of this truth;
that death can come to the young
but it will come to the old
and the realization is dawning that our generation
 is on the heels of the one we are, 
one by one, laying to rest!
A ripe old age turns to mist
 in death's twinkling of an eye!
So then, as we turn again 
to shoulder our yokes of scarred delight
pray we do not lose sight 
of the only payoff that counts
when, for all 'momentary mountains/afflictions, 
the eternal payoff is unveiled!

Therefore we do not lose heart.
 Though our outer self is wasting away, 
yet our inner self is being renewed day by day.
 17For our light and momentary affliction is producing 
for us an eternal weight of glory that is far beyond comparison.
 18So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. 
For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Just beyond what we can see ...

(No matter how bitter/sweet)
lies Payoff's Eternity...

Below, a bit of 'sweet'.
This dog can be sassy and silly one minute
and sound asleep at my feet the next!!😂




Though the payoff of push and shove
Through ups and downs of life and love
May appear, to the sphere of sight
Like a showcase of scarred delight
While grappling with the yoke of truth
By fresh parades of fading youth

And though the payoff may seem small
For prayers that rise and tears that fall
Where today holds no guarantees
That Circumstance will aim to please
The Hierarchy of Hope and Dream
We nurture with fondest esteem

…and though the payoff drags its feet
Where hold and letting go compete
Something about a gaping grave
When mourners meet, its scene to brave
Reminds us with sobriety
Of a payoff we cannot see

The payoff for man’s hope and hurt
Is not a fresh-turned mound of dirt
Is not a final farewell tear
Is not the boon of now and here
Oh no! Death is the turn of key
Where push and shove/life and love’s payoff will be

So then, before it is too late
Pray we would reevaluate
The quests and payments we applaud
And rest our confidence in God
Who will, for all eternity
Unveil what the payoff will be

© Janet Martin

We sang two of my favourite hymns yesterday









Saturday, September 30, 2023

So Long, September


This is always a sentimental day of the year...So long, September!
Swept away in a flurry of preparation and preserving!

September- the thick of
Earth's heaven 
of harvest!

So long, September’s misty morn...



Like a postlude, to tune the dark
With ballads slipping like a tear
No lips can kiss away...


Tonight's dessert awaiting a mound of freshly-whipped cream,
before heading to Jim's mom and sister, who are cooking the rest of supper!



So long, sweet sweep of summer spent
Of green-leaf secrets whispered ere
The air grew heavy with the scent
Of farewell’s pungent atmosphere
Ere daylight’s dusky hours fell
Faster beneath gavels deep blue
Where younger hunger tolled a bell
Of inevitable adieu

So long, September’s misty morn
Futile to stoke Past’s embers, oh
Or don a countenance forlorn
Where seasons always come and go
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to greet, a time to part
A time to laugh, a time to weep
And gather harvests for the heart

…fragments of color, peach and plum
Of hummingbird and butterfly
A petal-and-echo-spectrum
From summer full of days gone by
Of dahlia-pom-poms, vermillion
Of fields trembling with cricket lays
Of harvest moon medallion
Dangling above our raptured gaze

Where compositions of so-long
Rouse rhapsodies no pen can spell
Like the teal essence of sea-song
Rolling within, swell after swell
Like a postlude, to tune the dark
With ballads slipping like a tear
No lips can kiss away. Ah, hark!
Is that a falling leaf I hear?

So long, well-trampled garden path
By expeditions to and fro
To heap baskets with aftermath
That always awes and thrills us so
With toil and mercy’s dividends
Praise God from whom all blessing flows
For every break of day that wends
To so-long’s certain curtain-close

So long, purple wild aster art
And amber ambience that gleams
Like fresh-pressed cider, sweet and tart
To tease eager taste-buds with dreams
That, in spite of what time may take
It kindly, generously grants
Un-stoppered wonderment to wake
A time to sing, a time to dance

So long, so long, September-love
Of fading flower-serenade
Of clinging to a thinning glove
We wear on earth, but heaven-made
Of places we never quite found
And some we did, and never sought
So long, so long, September, crowned
With apple-red and golden rod

© Janet Martin






Friday, September 22, 2023

Wonder-dust or Swansong or September...



It had to be...a heart-and-soul Swansong!
Happy, happy, happy, happy
Last Day of Summer 2023


Your light that splays like amber glaze and bathes the earth in mellow mist...


Your wind-tossed bars where aster-stars twinkle like shattered amethyst...


Your lanes that wind, goldenrod lined, to lure us from the beaten track...



Your paradise for butterflies...


...and tousled wild-bloom bric-a-brac


Your pendulum of pear and plum drip-dripping from our lips and chins...


your brisker air that starts to wear the shriek of jay...


and honk of geese...


Your kitchen heat, pungent and sweet with basil, garlic, pickling spice
Your garden dish that makes me wish somehow, we could live each meal twice...





Your humble toil of mercy's spoil like contrails of an upward spark...
(a photo so we remember how tall the sweet corn grew this year!!!!)



Your orchard stroll that thrills the soul with apple-dappled dreams come true...




Your light that splays like amber glaze and bathes the earth in mellow mist
Your wind-tossed bars where aster-stars twinkle like shattered amethyst
Your garnet splash of mountain ash berries against backdrops of blue
Your orchard stroll that thrills the soul with apple-dappled dreams come true

Your heady blur of lavender, of marigold and cricket lays
Your subtle change as you estrange vistas of younger, summer days
Your pendulum of pear and plum drip-dripping from our lips and chins
A glockenspiel that starts to peal with farewell's reel as fall begins  

Your lanes that wind, goldenrod lined, to lure us from the beaten track
Your paradise for butterflies, and tousled wild bloom bric-a-brac
Your hugs that war with tugs that roar with Bygone’s foregone victory
Your tango of longing and love, where mulled breeze strums the yellow tree

Your brisker air begins to wear the shriek of jay and honk of geese
And in our hearts a hunger starts to prepare us for your release
And the so-long, as your swansong suffuses morning, noon and night
Relinquishment sublimely rent with tender grief and sheer delight 

Your kitchen heat, pungent and sweet with basil, garlic, pickling spice
Your garden dish that makes me wish somehow, we could live each meal twice
Your humble toil of mercy's spoil like contrails of an upward spark
Your melodies that waft and tease a world tucked beneath early dark

Your tangerine and gold and green as gourds are heaped in bright array
Your crisp hello where dawn’s tableau gleams like a silver serving tray
Your rains that spill from hill to hill, your chill that kindles wanderlust
Your pleasure of so-much-to-love before you turn to wonder-dust

September, you run wonder through us like shafts of sunlight through leaves 
You rush the skin that we are in with joys gathered like harvest sheaves 
While we begin to sense the thinning, winning ways of days of yore
You wake in us an ache because of so much to be thankful for 


© Janet Martin

Your tangerine and gold and green as gourds are heaped in bright array...

Your crisp hello where dawn’s tableau gleams like a silver serving tray...

Your rains that spill from hill to hill, your chill that kindles wanderlust...

Your pleasure of so-much-to-love before you turn to wonder-dust...



Yesterday's 'canning-first'-plum sauce! SO yummy