Saturday, December 31, 2016

Time's Thing Called Years...a repost

 A Re-post today...busy times. A new one tomorrow maybe?:)
Wishing all of you a blessed New Year!
Her garb is sheer where hindsight’s aptitude
Can better tell the wherefore of her stance
The apple of her eye is the romance
Of Rembrandts' rendered to past’s solitude
And what we did or didn’t do, joy-grief
A tug-of-war within the human breast
As the old year dons her eternal rest
And we hail the unknown to hone Belief
Where the threshold of morrow soon will spill
A canvas pure as God to earthy will

Thought’s time-engrafted reach is far too small
Though we, with fumbling talk try to explain
What mortal knowledge cannot full-attain
…to understand the Giver of it all
Who reigns beyond the tick and tock of clocks
And what we deem as old or new but grace
Unchanging and unfailing; human race
Grapples with strings and moment-soldered locks
Where consequence is the certain capstone
Of everything that ever we have done

With scathing ignorance we hit ‘repeat’
In spite of good intention how we fall
Thus grace alone is our utter all
As old and new mingle; a bittersweet
Vintage of retrospect; then love is blind
And kinder than it was when we were young
And surer of the words upon our tongue
Before the new grew older and the mind
Became a landscape riddled with smile-tears
Accumulated in Time’s thing called Years
© Janet Martin

Friday, December 30, 2016

Thursday Thoughts, Friday Jots...





As long as life remains
So too does grace of God
And opportunity to change
Those things we know we should

***
The ups and downs of love and life
Beneath our second glance
Turns into thought’s landscape shaped by
Response to circumstance

***
The way we are, for better-worse
Is never so complete
That we do not have reason to
Improve somehow, my sweet

 ***
If we do not know how to pray
Or wish we better could
We need to take the time to pray
As often as we should 

***
No matter how much
Life’s future lessens
It never runs out of
Trusting lessons

***
Priority, priority,
Beneath your voice I move
And often prove unconsciously
The God or gods I love

 ***

Look back at your mistakes
To learn from them, and then
Wiser and humbler move on and
Do not look back again

***

We cannot blame our feet alone
For the wrong way we went
The mind lays out the stepping-stone
That moves the foot’s intent

***

The mind will never muster what it takes to master it
The heart, desperately wicked and deceitful steers the Whole
…and we would all be shipwrecked on a rocky shore or reef
Save for the heart that repents and asks God to take control

 ***

The words we write or say are little more than tripe or noise
Unless deed jibes with that which the mouth easily employs

 ***
Together we can weather more than we thought possible
But first we must make sure that we agree which way to pull

 ***
Do not despair;
For we have prayer
A life-line up to God
Then pray that we
Pray faithfully
With more than just a nod

***
The old year
Like a feather loosed
Wafts out of our reach
Too late to learn
The lessons that
It intended to teach

The New Year
Like a singing bird
Perches on Mercy’s limb
The lessons we
Failed to full-learn
Are hidden in its wing

© Janet Martin



Hills






They sweep up from the depths of earth to touch the girth of heaven’s scrim
They leap tree-clad to strum the deep of endless blue with black-leaf limb
They lure us from the common-place to grace our thought and gaze with awe
They teach us about hope and faith and train us to reach toward God

Hills wear blue frills of chicory and trim the ridge with balsam prose
They depict love and life’s breathtaking sun-and-shadow highs and lows
They cradle in their crook and curve, wonders of quiet majesty
And as we climb, we witness worlds unfurled in panoramic spree

I love hills; they wear seasons well and who can tell what sights they veil
They rise to meet the skies where eyes their distant summits scale
But we will never see, unless we try, how worth the climb it is
And if we choose to stay put in the lowland, oh, how much we miss

© Janet Martin

I had a craving to climb a hill this morning.
Since we live on top of a hill

 I had to climb down to get to the up;-))
It's sort of hard to tell, when sky and earth are exactly the same shade, where the hill starts and stops!

Came across this chuckle in a book I was browsing through...


A Lot To Learn

It's a snowy-blowy morn...
Since no one has invented an apparatus that stays on top of soft-flake-fluffy, one must wade through thigh-deep white to feel the full wonder of perfection's plunder...
This poem can be read a stanza or two at a time rather than the whole thing if one so prefers;)


Like snow that melts upon the tongue, Time falls then disappears
It gathers as it pours; a hand that plants and harvests years
How much of it we touch and kiss, yet miss; its no return
Reiterates with what yet is, how much remains to learn

The best we have to offer often is not quite enough
To satisfy the howling hunger in each one of us
Time’s roaring tide of Moment courses from yon fount of blue
And forces us to reconsider what we thought we knew

This four-season arrangement floors us with its subtle sighs
Where we are often caught off-guard by hellos and good-byes
And it seems we never outgrow the humble need to learn
To trust the hand that refills as its drains time’s no-return

I’m glad that grace is unlike Time; steadfast and changeless stay
It forgives without keeping count and helps us face each day
It is the Hope in us that fans the flame of faith so we
With what we learn can pass on what we know yet cannot see

Like awe-struck sunset-gazers we watch midnight’s gong beget
Another year that disappears like day when sun is set
As all we strove and loved and hoped slips to a phantom urn
That cups, like ashes of a loved one, Bygone’s no-return

We have a lot to learn about what we thought we learned, oh,
And what we thought we knew turns into what we learn to know
We recall what our parents said and how we shook our heads
And now, as Time goes by we learn the truth in what they said

Time changes things but some things never change; our need for love 
Hatred and greed’s guttural goals never offer enough   
...and seamlessness of tick and tock that runs us through and through
Can lull us into thinking we have more Time than we do

Do not despair; see how the air is filled with Time unmarred
God grants another chance to try; though some of love is hard
He does not turn a shoulder, cold, to young or old, ah, we
Are the sole reason that new day extends Time’s yet-to-be

We tend to reach toward the skies where sighs and summer's meld
Where flower-lands cannot withstand winter, never withheld 
And winter never can deter with bluff and blustering
The return of the robin and the green-verve tides of spring

The old year fades; the Rubicon of centuries is hinged
Not to the gong of clocks or dawn, ruby and amber-tinged
But to the kind mercy of He who since Time first began
Will quench the thirst that we are cursed with since the fall of man

Like snow that melts upon the tongue this old year slips from sight
Newness is like a winter’s morning-countryside, pure white
Where soon footprints will mar the genesis before Amen
And perfection will wear the scars of learning’s Try Again

Was ever yet a moment more precious than Here and Now?
Worthless to wallow where regret would chain us to dread’s prow
But look; Hope is reborn with each new morn; God lights the lea
With love; It will not fail in its regale to you and me

The best that we can hope for is a half-breath prayer away
If we believe He will bestow what we need for Today
The hardness of our hearts and disbelief can build a wall
Twixt we and He who always, always loves us best of all

We cannot know what this day will unfold, much less a year
Futile to face its mystery and what-will-be with fear
But lean on He who Was-Is-Will BE faithful without doubt
Then He will help us learn what love and life is all about

What love and life is all about is not without command
Only a fool would disregard the Lord's righteous right Hand
He cups the rubric we call Time; but only for a bit
As we draw ever nearer to the severance of it

© Janet Martin

Happy second-last day of 2016!

Thursday, December 29, 2016

Think The Best (Then Leave The Rest)





‘Think the best then leave the rest’
Humanness is prone to assume
But we should try kindness instead
And remember the Golden Rule

‘Think the best and leave the rest’
Life’s stumble-slip-and-slide affair
Needs shoulders to lean on, my friend,
Not finger-pointing, pious stare

Thus, lest by slander's stab we scar
The tender student of life’s test
We should remember who we are
And, 'think the best then leave the rest’

© Janet Martin


We were, on more than one occasion, gently chided by Grandmother
if we jumped to obvious, but unproven and unkind conclusions!
'think the best, then just leave the rest because we don't know the whole story'
she would remind us.
I value her influence still when I am prone to assume…