Thursday, June 20, 2013

Treasure-chest





We trace them, but not with our fingers
We kiss them, but not with our lips
And oh, how their essence lingers
Long after the hour slips

We hold them but not in embraces
We keep them but not in our clutch
Echoes of times and places
Cradled in ethereal touch

The heart is a vault filled with treasure
Of love and its lessons we learn
As memory's immutable measure
Preserves what can never return

© Janet Martin

Let's make today's treasure something to treasure! God bless and keep.


Monkey-bars




I push through
Memories of my own childhood
Scanning the playground
Where students
Like colorful bobbing balloons
Race and run
High on dreams
Of summer vacation
And suddenly I see her
‘Pink tee-shirt monkey
Dangling from the jungle-gym
Her blonde hair streaming in the
Three-o’clock sun
Her teacher and I
Touch glances
Laughing
As her
Scattered, flamboyant personality
Studies the strangeness
Of an
Up-side down
World

© Janet Martin

Yesterday I attended my daughter's annual June picnic at her school. While her teacher and I chatted and discussed the year suddenly we both spotted her swinging up-side down from the top of the soccer-net  as if to testify to our amusements and frustrations of a carefree, scatterbrained Victoria.



Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Kid's Poem on Telling the Truth




I ought to never tell a lie
‘Cause lies like company
And soon the lie that first was one
Turns into two or three
For when a lie begins to lose
Its word-woven disguise
We protect it from the truth
By telling some more lies
And suddenly it’s hard to tell
How many lies were said
So it is always wise and well
To tell the truth instead

© Janet Martin


Of Almost-Poems





Ah troubadour, vexing the schemes of pen
You dangle unformed; vainly we beseech
Your laughter drifting just beyond our reach
A madrigal taunting the dreams of men

Almost, the wind combing the moon-brushed hill
Unravels your mute, mystic revelry
We glean the quiet, poised in poesy
But you evade the ink-breath in our quill

Elusive lover; will we ever know
The sweetness of your nectar, fancy-spun
A sparkle on the sea in glints of sun
A rush of vapor-ocean ebb and flow

Ah, troubadour of thought-blood left unshed
The compositions in your phantom sigh
Evokes a hunger in the poet’s eye
For all the rivers that remain unbled

© Janet Martin

Does it drive you crazy too...reaching for that thought that cannot be spelled?




Of Stepping-stones and Unknowns





Come now, the dawn unfurls a virgin runway from the deep
It seals our cares of yesterday where all past ages sleep
A pantomime of hopes and dreams beckons us to arise
To live and laugh; to love and pray before this new day dies

Come now; attune our hearts and lips to sing Your praises, God
As we press ever nearer to that line twixt sky and sod
Today a bud will brim to bloom while somewhere petals weep
But our goal is not the tomb, nor our victory sleep

Come now, for no one is immune to moments as they spill
And we all are accountable as we employ their will
These cares that spawn our groans and test our faith like mustard seed
Are mercy’s stepping stones leading to Arms that intercede

Come now, without heartache and hurt our prayers would cease to flow
And we would not learn how to need the One that loves us so
The dawn unfurls its gift of grace into life’s new unknown
His Hands extend in tenderness beneath each stepping stone

© Janet Martin



Tuesday, June 18, 2013

When Man and Woman Say 'I Do'

All day I have been 'windows-shopping' until my head hurts!




When man and woman say ‘I do’
Oh wondrous mystery
God joins the lives of what were two
And binds them tenderly
Then what was two is done away
And what were two is gone
As with this promise, ‘I take thee’
God joins two lives as one

Oh mystery
How can it be
Oh, great and glorious wonder
A sacred cord
Bound by the Lord
Man cannot rend asunder

‘Til death doth part’ hallowed vow
Recorded up in heaven
From this day forth two are one now
As long as they are livin'
To have and hold forevermore
What God has joined abides
Until that sad and solemn door
Where life and death divides

Oh mystery
A unity
Of sacred, holy wonder
This ties that binds
Two hearts and minds
Man cannot part asunder

(Repeat) When man and woman say ‘I do’
Oh, mystery of wonder
God joins the lives of what were two
And makes them one forever

© Janet Martin

For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and join to his wife; And they two shall be one flesh: so then they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder. …Mark 10:7-9

Conception of a Poem



If left un-wrought its weightless weight
Becomes to heavy for my thought
So I must spill its mystic thrill
To see what becomes of its jot

I cannot tell its mind or mien
But oh, it presses deep inside
Nor can I quell its aching swell
A rollicking and restless tide

The sky so blue, the thought of you
The dawn, the aftermath of storms
The wooing of a turtle dove
The memories that living forms

The holding on, the letting go
The love of mother and her child
The secret bliss of passion’s kiss
The midnight wind lonesome and wild

These are the drops that culminate
Until they cannot be suppressed
And I must heed where whispers plead
And pound the walls beneath my chest

And then, oh then with humble pen
The world unfolds beneath its quill
As agony and ecstasy
In poetry its longings spill

© Janet Martin


Vexation of Thought



 

To what end then will you come, little thought
Teasing the mind with breath-flickers of light
Are you but a chasing of wind-whispered naught
Vexing bridge-builders and dreamers alike?

Sometimes you come to me; beggar within
Stripping my being of its wearied moil
You press; mighty torrent beneath silent skin
Weighing the meaning of life’s little spoil

Pleasure and torment succinctly align
Where is the fount from which you abound?
Gentle, yet ruthless, in formless design
Affirming, condemning without merest sound

To what end then will you come, little thought?
Circle of wanting, of wonder and will
Wielding your power in unscripted jot
As hands and feet your bidding fulfill

Understanding increases your void
Wisdom vexes what cannot be grasped
As I consider your passion employed
Only to fall like dust fragments at last

Apart from the One who instills mankind’s soul
Apart from a Knowing that cannot be taught
I could not bear the mind of this fool
Or the ineptness of my little thought

© Janet Martin

I'm reading in Ecclesiastes right now. This verse sums it up; all of life's vanity and chasing of the wind... for without him, (God) who can eat or find enjoyment? Eccles. 2:25 If what we do is simply an extension of thought seeking to please self we will never be satisfied.