Tuesday, August 2, 2016

Who Am I? Just a Girl... Answering the question at Dverse today



 
Dipping my toes into the Dverse pool...

Today's prompt: I am who I am but tomorrow, who know?

For today’s Quadrille (a poem of 44 words: no more, no less – not including the title), create a self-portrait.  Perhaps it will be a snapshot of you in some moment of time. Or a taste of your tastes. Or a glimpse into the conglomeration of you — are we perhaps the ultimate nesting doll? Many of us post photos or images with our poems so in this instance, it could be a recent photo; a photo taken in your sepia days; a picture of something you cherish that in essence tells us who you are; an abstract drawing or a flower or animal or color that you ascribe to yourself. Try to make the image complementary to your words.
So, think about it for awhile. Who are you? No one word to include in this prompt….just asking you to create some type of self portrait that you’re comfortable sharing. Let your words be your palette and make broad or fine brush strokes as you wish. You’re the artist here!

Here is a taste of my tastes...



Just a girl who loves to think
Addicted to ink
Night-owl and
Early riser
Troubadour

Merchant of moments
Awed by God
Rhymer of reason and season-song
Tea-drinker, only if there is no coffee
In love with life and the Author of it
Never bored


This Much Ado



Today is hubby's Mom's 85th birthday! 
She has been a widow for almost 42 years. This past year she has bid farewell to many longtime friends, her circle of soulmates dwindling in life's twilight years.
Happy, Happy Birthday, Mother!
Over the years whenever we ask her what she would like for her birthday, Christmas, etc.
 her reply has been the same,
"Just come to visit"


 When I was a little girl my mother gave me a small motto that I kept on my dresser for years. the motto has disappeared but the words on it are etched permanently in my memory,
Only one life
It will soon be past
Only what's done
for Christ will last

Be very careful, then, how you live; not as unwise but as wise, 
Eph.5:15

This gift God gives
Of day to day
Is filled with
Opportunity
This life we live
Of do-and-say
Is shaping our
Legacy

This common rite
Of morn to night
Unveils the noise
Of much ado
It hails a fight
Of wrong and right
And sorrow-joys
We journey through

Do not despair
This thoroughfare
Of holding close
Then letting go
Is like a stair
From here to There
…and what There is
None fully knows

Not to but through
The seeming grave
That holds the bones
Which hold the soul
This much ado
Is like a wave
That dissolves on
Death’s sacred shoal

© Janet Martin

Three things in common all have we...
First life, 
Then death,
Then eternity




Each day is like a flower
That spills from bud to bloom
Before it fades and falls away
Into Yesterday's tomb 



Who knows how far or near we are
To There, an awesome awe-full Gate
Today is Time enough to care
and prepare, ere it is too late

Monday, August 1, 2016

Motherhood


 She was only gone for a week to help at a kid's summer camp but it felt a lot longer for mother...
Life feels 'right-er' with her here:)


 Oh! The constant bitter-sweet surprises of motherhood...

It wakes heart-    tender splendor
As it aches and breaks and heals and reels with
Breathless grandeur of a love that wounds and heals
It burns with yearning fervor as it earns its seal of scars
As it learns that tears and laughter turn to years 
Scattered like shattered stars; it surrenders vain
  Ambition for the gain of girl or boy
Love lifts a heart-shaped
Cup that over-
 Flows with
Sorrow-
Joy


© Janet Martin

Of Another Summer

Happy August 2016!



These are the days of harvest
The gathering of hours
As summer fills and drains the trove
Of fields and trees and flowers

These are the days of labor
The tending of a plot
Where soon the wave of summer wanes
To graves of afterthought


These are the days of glory
Childhood is unrestrained
Upon the verge of history
Its splurge of bloom is chained


These are the days of learning
That Time will wait for none
A shimmer snuffed where outstretched hands
Sift seasons swiftly spun


These are the days of travel
Pursuit and retreat mesh
Beneath the gavel of blue skies
Time tries the trust of flesh


These are the days of summer
A haze of color weaned
To pages filled with poems of
Another summer gleaned

© Janet Martin