Strength and Beauty » Poetry

An “S” walk in the gardens…

Shanel Martens — Tue, 05 May 2009 22:26:40 +0000

Loneliness settles into my bones like the chill of an early spring evening.
I head off into the gardens.
My nose brushes the sweet blooms of honeysuckle.
My arms gather spirea like a plump wedding bouquet.
My fingers run through the dangling bleeding hearts like strings on a harp.
The petite blossoms of the crab apple tree wink at me and I give a glittery eye back.
I hunt down the first of the lilacs, plunging my nose deep into the cluster of deliciousness.
I envy those hunched over, backs to the sun, hands nurturing the earth.
Sparrows bounce around at my feet and I say a prayer over a dead red breasted robin.
I am stopped in my tracks by the fields of tulips and daffy’s.
Color seeps into my lonely bones and I feel consoled.

Winter Freckles

Shanel Martens — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 02:39:23 +0000

Sunshine is a rare commodity these winter days where it seems like every other day it is snowing another 3-4 inches and the snow blowers are all rattling off their “2 cycle engine hummmm” in the neighborhood. The beaver full length fur coat has made its grand appearance on more than one occasion when the thermometer outside our kitchen nook window hits below that big zero degrees mark. I think our furnace ran nonstop for two or three days last week when our Winter Queen refused to let up on the frigid air blasting through every nook and cranny of this old and beloved house.

Despite all this, I treasure winter. I really do. I know; I’m strange. There is such deep and mysterious beauty to all of it. I have been enjoying my car rides to work in the morning–turning East onto the mini expressway in Waukegan and seeing that wide expanse of steaming water called Lake Michigan. The sun rising over it and penetrating the irises of my eyes. Passing the small stretch of woods coming into Lake Bluff and having the sun dance through the trees and play chase with me. I can feel it tapping me on the shoulder and running away and then pouncing on me again. And then I come into wide open areas where the sun is rapping on my window, coating what skin is visible and I feel winter freckles emerging. Ahhhh, sun.

I let the sun kiss me tenderly and it feels like medicine for my achy and arthritic soul.

A poem.

Shanel Martens — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 14:14:32 +0000

O God of all seasons and senses
grant me your sense of timing
to submit gracefully
and rejoice quietly
in the turn of the seasons

In this season of short days and long nights
of grey and white and cold,
teach me the lessons of waiting:
of the snow joining the mystery
of the hunkered-down seeds
growing in their sleep
watched over by gnarled-limbed, grandparent trees
resting from autumn’s staggering energy;
of the silent, whilrling earth
circling to race back home to the sun.
O God, grant me your sense of timing.

In this season of short days and long nights,
of grey and white and cold,
teach me the lessons of endings:
children growing,
friends leaving,
jobs concluding,
stages finishing,
grieving over,
blaming over,
excuses over.
O God grant me your sense of timing.

In this season of short days and long nights,
of grey and white and cold,
teach me the lessons of beginnings;
that such waitings and endings
may be a starting place,
a planting of seeds
which bring to birth
what is ready to be born -
something right and just and different,
a new song,
a deeper relationship,
a fuller love -
in the fullness of your time.
O God grant me your sense of timing.

—from Guerrillas of Grace by Ted Loder