Friday, November 22, 2013

Beneath Time's Evening Bell

 PAD challenge; day 22

For today’s prompt, write a poem using at least three of the following six words:
  • ideogram
  • remora
  • casket
  • eclipse
  • selfie
  • wretch
Use the words in the title of your poem, in the body of your poem, and feel free to play with them (by which, I mean, make them plural, past tense, etc.).





Earth, like an umber casket
Has cradled every bloom
November mourns, its heavy robe  
Enshrouds each stricken plume
For nature’s fairer filament
Has fallen; flow’r and leaf
Slumbers where wretch and prince preside
Bound for its steadfast sheaf

Moment folds over moments
Ephemeral eclipse
Of petals, poems and parting
And then its present slips
Into the crypt of ‘bygone’
An unrelenting plot
Of had and held remembered
And none exhumes its lot

The remora of hours
Does not release its prey
It drinks a field of flowers
And turns raven to gray
November’s stark procession
Bows where its laughter fell
Its dirge, a somber silence
Beneath Time’s evening bell

© Janet Martin


 

Thursday, November 21, 2013

If Poetry Disappeared...





The world would not stop turning
For loss of verse
But the heart would
Stop burning
and racing
or chasing
the flirt of
elusive word
and the world would not notice
the absence of it
for the most part
but oh,
the light in the eye,
the path to the heart
the half-breath ocean stirred
the beauty of thought
or anguish-born jot
would never bring a smile
or a tear
and the poet would mourn
the day he was born
if verse would disappear…

© Janet Martin


Stone-cold

File:Stone sculptor at work.jpg 

Image source; wikipedia

Writer's Digest  PAD challenge, day 21
For today’s prompt, write a secret message poem.




they looked
past the astonishing detail
past the painstaking hours
past the passion
and the pride,
past the poetry,
the tears,
the tenderness,
the love,
and then they said,
how much do we owe you?

© Janet Martin

Until all that Remains is Farewell





It tugs at the heart-strings…
Those in-severable ties
Reinforced, it seems
By life’s little good-byes

When grief runs its river
In tender tear-stream
As keenly we ponder
The end of a dream

How sad to stop living
Before life is spent
To choose futile grieving
And longing’s lament

…when time keeps on turning
A balm in its grasp
To succor our yearning
With what yet must pass

Life tugs at our heart-strings
Its ‘over-and-done’
The ravishing echo
Of love’s cherished song

Live, love and laugh, then
For no one can tell
When we will be ushered
To our last farewell 

© Janet Martin


Charcoal Flower-gardens



 Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own. ~CHARLES DICKENS~

 Pristine; pencil-patterns
Lure the wand’ ring eye
To charcoal flower-gardens
Etched against the sky

Nature spares not one season
But stuns our eager gaze
With beauty beyond reason
In rampant God-spun ways

The tree that bore bud-jewel
Then fanned the weary brow
Before its grand apparel
Fell, just before the snow…

…is not stripped, then forgotten
But spreads its filigree
Like charcoal flower-gardens
Across earth’s frozen lea

© Janet Martin

Hubby simply shakes his head when I laugh out loud in disbelief because a barren tree can be so breath-taking-ly beautiful!


The Hidden Cost




Writer's Digest  PAD challenge, day 21
For today’s prompt, write a secret message poem.

its cavern gapes beneath her skin
electronic friends expand its void
their 'selfies' cannot share her pain
somehow technology destroyed
the most important thing of all
she feels as though she has no choice
eight hundred friends; no one to call
oh, how she craves the sound of 'voice'

Janet Martin

okay, the message isn't very secret...I'll try again if I can:)


Thursday Thoughts~



It is not up to us to know
The workings of Love’s Higher Plan
But it is up to us to do
With each moment, the best we can

***

Not by works, lest we should boast
Is the salvation of the soul
But by the blood of Jesus Christ
The broken sinner is made whole

***

To indulge a wish
Even an idle little one
Can be an all-consuming ill
If we give it a throne

***

To deny ourselves
For the sake of pride
Is like wandering the world
With no place to hide

To deny ourselves
For the sake of fear
Is like trading laughter
To covet a tear

To deny ourselves
For the sake of love
Is like opening windows
To Heaven above

***

’Tis easy to justify
With thought
Those things we do
That we ought not

***

Those things we do
Though small they seem
Are not mere moments
In life’s stream
But in the end
Will prove to be
The corner-stone
Of our legacy

***

Consider carefully
What you say and do
For somewhere Someone
Is watching you…

***

Take heed of the guests
You allow in your brain
For we become thoughts
That we entertain

***

Save the tree
Save the water
Save the air
Save the world…
Pity the one
When it’s all said and done
Who neglected
To save his soul

***

Beauty is not something we can buy or wear
It is not body or make-up or hair
The outward is skin; it covers that part
Of true Beauty; a meek and humble heart

***

Different faces, different bodies,
Different races, jobs and roles
Different strengths, different weaknesses
And different dreams and goals
But
We are all alike
We all are flesh and blood
To a common appointment
Eternity and God

Janet~

Hope you have a thought-full, wonder-full, thank-full Thursday!






Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Waiting...





  
‘I’m waiting’, she explains.
‘We are all waiting’, he replies, ‘but what comes is usually not what we are waiting for…’

From Larkrise to Candleford~

Yes, we are all waiting,
For something, it seems,
This is the way
of hopes and dreams...

Love,
Death,
Healing,
Home,
and in the meantime
we must accept what comes…

Janet~