Showing posts with label New Year Poem. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Year Poem. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 9, 2024

For Our 'Happy-in-Waiting' (in Happy New Year)

I started this poem a week ago,
snaring lines as they bobbed by...
This week I finally had a chance to collect more fragments
from my trek through impending happiness-es!
I splashed through brooks, 
went on a picnic,
 laughed at a silly, fat robin,
and SO much more!

Happy Whatever Happy-in-waiting is waiting for you!



Winter’s canvas to be tickled with giggling snow-angel throngs


Below, one of my all-time favorite shots from days long gone
Victoria and her cousin...
Hush! plush-pink peony pom-poms wait to pop nature’s green cork...

Chill winds to be charmed and taken by soft zephyrs, blossom-sweet
Gardens to be warmed and ‘wakened by the banter of bare feet
Barren branches to be garnished with whispers of God-spun lace
Snowy hillsides to grow tarnished as sunbeams give winter chase

Dust to stir as fields are planted with both seed and farmer’s prayer
Hearts and souls to be enchanted by glory, heavens declare
Buds to burst with petal-plunder, miracles in every pod
Happiness immersed in wonder by the handiwork of God

Sassy robin tugging dinner from a grassy smorgasbord
Scrumptious supper-soups to simmer, coffees to be brewed and poured
Into fav’rite mugs, hand hugged and ever so blissfully sipped
While the bashful morn is tugged across skylines, pink and gold dipped

Summer’s harvest to be pickled, autumn to dwindle leaf-songs
Winter’s canvas to be tickled with giggling snow-angel throngs
Cheese and whole-grain cracker-stackers to pack in a picnic lunch
Bunch ‘o please-and-thank-you-happy snackers munching carrot-crunch

Steps to slow to walk with children, innocence to steal our breath
While we point the way to Heaven from earth’s thoroughfares of Death
Cozy snuggle-with-me twilight while outside the world grows dark
Foibles turning into hindsight as discernment meets its mark

Solemn Last Post and Reveille Remembrances-lest we forget
Fires to be stoked and fences to tend to, not mended yet
Hush! plush-pink peony pom-poms wait to pop nature’s green cork
Rush of seasons waits to romp and vex wild wanderlust with work

Payments to be made and worry to teach us to use our knees
Patience to test ‘we’re late’ hurry, as we search for phones, shoes, keys
Kindness to be shown, ink-hunger to be fed with books, books, books
Inner child to rediscover as we wade through fields and brooks

Cakes to bake and decorate for birthdays yet to celebrate
Beach to stroll and hand to hold; don’t wait until it is too late
Silver poplar’s shiny shivers, tap dancers made out of rain
Waltzing on impromptu rivers gushing down the street and lane

Naughty puppy to be scolded, antics by Mr. Mischief
Laundry to be washed and folded, to-do-lists-achieved-relief
Days to drain of exultation to God for blessing-heaped trays
Thought to tune with adoration, heart to overflow with praise

© Janet Martin

Scrumptious supper-soups to simmer,
(instead of scrumptious supper-soup, last night was scrumptious, supper-stirfry!)
Chicken and veg stir-fried and served on a bed of stir-fried/steamed cabbage and black beans










Monday, January 1, 2024

Like a Constant Gift

Last night it began to snow!
It felt like a gift from God, as if He was saying,
'See? I am covering the dirty, old year with
a fresh, new unsoiled slate!



Heb.13:8
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

Happy 2024!

As the old year ends and the new begins 
may our sole/soul resolve be 
a more complete surrender to 
God's full authority

Sometimes we are guilty of wanting God's way, our way. 
We want Him to yield to our will, not we to His!




The past is irreversible, its seasons set in stone
The future is invincible when faced through Christ alone
The present, like a constant gift of opportunity
Furnishes where all life is lived; in Now’s benignity

Anxiety for what might be is certain to destroy
Faith’s confident humility that leads to peace and joy
What has been none can modify, but what is and will be
Is like a constant gift, thereby/whereby God proves His fealty

Goodness and mercy’s rich supply sustains surrendered hearts
No greater gain can satisfy than that which grace imparts
Thus, as God lays the old to rest, as New is ushered in
Once more hope hoists its humble quest to give/live our best for Him

Sometimes the state our Saviour saved us from, slips our minds
How arrogant, we then become, when mortal motive blinds
Us to the Light that spans the rift and keeps faith undeterred
Each promise like a constant gift to all who trust His word

© Janet Martin

Malachi 4:2
But to you who fear My name
The Sun of Righteousness shall arise
With healing in His wings;







Monday, January 2, 2023

Age Old Assurance for the Newness of Now

 O God, our Help in Ages Past





Whether at the beginning of a year
the middle or the end
the bedrock of 
faith's hope, joy and peace 
remains the same; trust God

A New Year.
A New Day.
The same God
Come what may

Though the way
No one can see
Faith in God
Seals victory

God's Word like
A steadfast Hand
Leads into
The Promised Land

His Word does
Not lead astray
As we hope
And trust and pray

In the power
Of God’s might
Faith will be
Equipped to fight

Pray we never
Run this race
Without God’s
Armor in place

Then and only
Then will we
Be fitted
For what will be

Then faith will
Be undeterred
Through the power
Of God’s word

Where without God
We are weak
And we know not
What we seek

… or what master
To obey
In the newness
of Today

A new day
and a New Year
The same God
To commandeer

...the same goodness
truth and love
Fills the Unknown
with Enough

© Janet Martin

Heb.11:8
By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place 
he would later receive as his inheritance,
 obeyed and went,
 even though he did not know where he was going.





Sunday, January 1, 2023

A New Year Revolution


Happy New Year!

Below is an image of a card that my grandparents received in/around 1937.


This book from 1949 is a vault of timeless wisdom-treasure!

Here is today's meditation/blessing/wish,
as relevant today as it was then.


(Don't you love how, as time passes still
life's best and true things are timeless?!)

Come, where a new year hoists a trove
Of hopes that we maintain
Where the best we can do for love
Is love and love again

Rather than lob slight’s stinging stone
Where we all slip and err
Come, let us help each other on
This God-ward thoroughfare

For all that fuels fret-and-fuss
This precious truth abides
Goodness and mercy follow us
All the days of our lives

Then come, where the old is made new
Where endings turn to starts
Where pray, once more we resolve to
Gladden fellowmen’s hearts

© Janet Martin

Psalm 23:6
Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, 
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.



Friday, December 30, 2022

What is the Use?





I got a mega-reality-jolt as I lined up the calendars of years flying by!
Reminding me of this verse!

James 4:14
What is your life? 
You are a mist that appears for a little while 
and then vanishes.

What is the use of passing years
If at their end we find
When its last moment disappears
We are still no more kind

What is the use of each year’s cast
Fastened to ‘how time flies’
If when its final day has passed
We still are no more wise

What use is time’s swift no return
Gifted in day-to-day
If  love's lessons we ought to learn
Have not taught us to pray

What is the use of good intent
Of resolution's dare
If we are, at the old year’s end
No better than we were

What is the use, when looking back
With sentimental heart
We blush to see that we still lack
What we did at the start?  

What is the use of  all we chase 
Like a red, rubber ball
If God's goodness, mercy and grace
Have not changed us at all

© Janet Martin

Psalm 90:12
Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Eph.5:15-21
See then that you walk [e]circumspectly, not as fools but as wise,
  16redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
17Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 
18And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; 
19speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,
20giving thanks always for all things 
21submitting to one another in the fear of [f]God.




Thursday, December 29, 2022

Frameworks of Farewell

 



The framework of farewell is filled with moments spilled and spent
Into a little locket frilled with laughter and lament
Where what we argue or reject, or believe and embrace
Becomes part of the retrospect that farewell’s frames showcase

Sometimes it seems I almost see Father Time tease my sigh
With a fedora jauntily pulled down over one eye
He tips his hat and with the other hand touches my cheek
‘There, there, you know I understand the words you cannot speak’

Sometimes I think I sense him wink as one more year becomes
The latest, stationary link of soldered cookie crumbs
And sums soft-shook from flowers that we plant, then pluck and press
Between books filled with hours of love’s hopeful happiness

Where bittersweet, an echo-fleet embarks upon a sea
That surges with the thrum of bare feet lost on Bygone’s lea
Where frames of farewell gaped while hellos rang in the New Year
From thresholds barely shaped before their doorways disappear

...into the mist of faces kissed and arms that ache because
We cannot gather back the vista of The Way/Day That Was
Where the New Year that tolled a bell dangling from midnight’s skies
 Is stilled in frameworks of farewell with now Old Year’s demise

Darling, (dear, Father Time, forgive my bold intimacy)
But you perplex the poet's rhyme without apology 
And vex brave fantasy with fact; darling, then hold me near
And I will hold your hat while you kiss away yesteryear  

© Janet Martin










Tuesday, December 27, 2022

Winsome Woo


The magnitude of the snow-majesty we are enjoying is impossible
to capture with a camera-lens!




It rouses within a winsome woo words cannot capture quite...

Now woos a winsome sense of blues. Of golds and grays and greens
Impressionistic avenues woven through wafting scenes
Of unfurled hues of joy and strife’s herculean highs and lows
Where morn to eventide rolls rife with all that life bestows
And season-song cuts like a knife where so-long ebbs and flows

The catalyst to letting go can shield us from the sum
Of touch and taste and holding’s holy showdowns yet to come
Where youth soon dons truth’s tinges; it is futile to rebel
Where summer’s flashy fringes deck the halls of autumn’s knell
Where hello always hinges to the framework of farewell

Because beginnings always end and ‘end’ always begins
Now woos a winsome sense of friendship through what always thins
To Old Year almost over where the New Year waits to spill
Both knee-deep dell of clover and steep, courage-honing hill
New worlds yet to discover and blank pages yet to fill

Now woos within the stark, dark imminence of vast unknowns
A sense of golds and blues that mark the ‘Thence’ of Steppingstones
That ultimately lead toward That Single Certainty
Of face-to-face with Christ the Lord and of eternity
Thus, therefore, no one can afford to ignore what will be

Where we are lavished with what slips through fingertips with ease
To leave behind the winsome fellowship of memories
Where heartstrings bind the ties of love, of hope and hunger too
Around impressions of a glove filled with the winsome woo
Of what is never quite enough of love’s green-gold-gray-blue

© Janet Martin




Saturday, January 1, 2022

The Humble Sum of Shoes (An Old-to-New Year Poem)

Happy New Year!

“Grace and peace be yours in abundance,
 through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.” 
(2 Pet. 1:2)

The old year ran out before I was able to finish
its final post...
Hello and welcome, 2022!
Momentous carousel of gray and gold,
green, blush and blue...
May we weather with hope renewed 
each day as it is lent
and leave behind when it is through 
a year of love well spent...

The above verse is a brief contemplation
Below an ambling stroll through a garden of thoughts

...and a few snapshots of the end of the old 





a visit to the neighbour's farm...


Harbour view after returning middle daughter to her home (away from home)




and beginning of the new...




Tendrils of day-to-day like vines entwine
Where green shoots gild weather-beaten remains
And hope rekindles bittersweet refrains
On thoroughfares of four-season design
Where what was new a year ago is old
And what is new runs rife with life’s unknowns
And what is old is framed in grins and groans
That only eyes of retrospect behold
Yet, as we peer ahead no one can see
What waits to climb time’s gates to history

For all that changes some things never do
Nothing estranges takers from the Hands
That give to each its score of numbered sands
Nothing can thwart the truth, forever true
Nothing can bar faith’s humble prayer from He
Who knows what waits to be, oh, blissful thought
No matter what is lent to mortal lot
Nothing usurps Divine Authority
Do not despair, but bless God; do not curse
His goodness, steadfast through better or worse

The vines that climb the arbor of a year
Soon disappear, or so we dare to think
But though moments are over in a wink
So much abides beneath Bequeathed Veneer
Where words and deeds like seeds scattered behind
May seem to sleep, like gardens heaped with snow
But in the course of time the fruit will show
This is the way all nature is designed
He is not mocked who ordains time and place
And stocks each season with mercy and grace

The new to the old grafts with seamless ease
Thresholds meld to cold gravestones of the past
Daybreak fuels dusk’s purple shadow-cast
The rise and fall of footstep-symphonies
Like waves; a mighty force that disappears
How sacred then, commonplace steps become
When from shorelines we view the humble sum
Of shoes outgrown or outliving man’s years
How humbly then we stoop to tie the strings
Of faith in God for what the new year brings

The highs and lows of joys and woes compose
The dust and ash that tears and laughter spill 
Where morning hoists Mercy's faithful refill
From He who crowns the thorn-stem with a rose
As north, south, east or west our steps deplete
The Path hinged to endless eternity
And no one knows how near or far will be
The sacred transport from time's trampled beat 
As we are borne beyond the humble sum 
Of shoes and such, into the world to come

© Janet Martin

From me to precious you,
Wishes for a
A blessed and joyful New Year!

Wednesday, December 29, 2021

New Year Happiness Anticipation

 Ageless hopes for a Happy New Year!





A kiss on Child’s soft, chubby cheek
Or on down-crown of golden curls
Daybreak, all gold and purple chic
And great big hugs from little girls

A brook, earth’s most enchanting crease
A book to feed word wanderlust
A nook in nature’s masterpiece
To worship God with love-awed trust

A winter’s morn, fluffy and white
A shock of corn, forlorn, forgot
Dusk’s friendly fireside delight
Hot soup to ladle from a pot

Crumbs after buttered toast is gone
The yawn and hum of the mundane
The short answer to a question 
Tiny tap dancers made of rain 

Ageless thrills of discovery
The carousel of season-tide
Spring's bud-untethered filigree
Excitement of Here-comes-the-bride

A way to get from here to there
A new Today untried, untrod
Blue heavens to capture our stare
And draw our gaze upward to God

Warm slippers, sweaters, blankets, smiles
Such simple pleasure-treasures, oh
Coffee, clean, folded laundry piles
Gardens asleep beneath the snow

God’s Word to cheer and teach and guide
Unaltered by the change time brings
Beauty's pastoral countryside
To make us feels as rich as kings

Unwalled woodland sabbaticals
A perch beneath trees lofty tress
The happiness that animals
Bring to a world of peopled-ness

The joy that birds and flowers birth
As we behold God’s creature care
The purity of guiltless mirth
The surety of answered prayer

The wealth of family and friends
The hope beyond love’s groans and sighs
Unbeaten path that dips and wends
Wonders to take us by surprise

Two tots for tea, a turquoise sea
The payoff view after the climb
Mist-grist of unpenned poetry
The felling fist of Father Time

And for earth’s very careworn road
Faith’s very Heaven-glorious goal
Because Christ paid the debt we owed
And saved The Very Deathless soul

© Janet Martin



Friday, January 1, 2021

New Year's Prayer

 

New Year's Resolution-prayer

Posting the annual New Year's Card
(one that belonged to my Grandparents)
People used to send New Year's cards with words of 
thankfulness and encouragement inside!




Let us not be like wisemen 
Leaving gifts that we forget 
Bending to pick up again 
Hope’s cast-offs of fear and dread 

Let us not return to drink 
From the cesspools of this world 
After we bowed at the brink 
Of Living Water unfurled 

Let us not forget the joys 
We embraced on Christmas Eve 
When we return to life’s noise 
Let us still hope and believe 

Let us not return to hills 
To tend flocks of careworn earth 
And forget the song that spilled 
When angels announced His birth 

Let us keep the love we feel 
As we kneel in Bethlehem 
Let us hope in Who is real 
In Thy precious name, amen 


© Janet Martin 



Threshold...


Happy 2021!

And off we go,
Prayer by prayer
and



From this year's threshold as we wonder what 'landscape' 2021 waits to unfold, this:

Deut.11:11-12
But the land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of 
is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven. 
 It is a land the Lord your God cares for; the eyes of the Lord your God are continually on it 
from the beginning of the year to its end.

Where nothing new under the sun waits to stun us with age-old ways 
Where we dust off resolutions and vow to give God greater praise 
Where we wonder at what will be just like we did a year ago 
Before what at the first was hid but now joins Past’s vast picture-show 

The threshold of the New is clean, where what has been greets what will be 
Across time’s stage many a scene waits at the gates of history 
Where what we do with what God grants will become part of a collage 
That soon will join the soldered ranks of dreamlike echo-decoupage 

Where we are at the mercy of far more than measures of a clock 
Where still, the greatest of these, Love, will be a trusty building block 
Where, tick by tock, already the lock to what waits to be has sprung 
Where we stand on the threshold of Mercy renewed to old and young 

Where, from its portal prayers take flight, from mortal to Immortal, oh 
Where none would be fit for the fight but for God’s grace whereby we go 
Where His power and discipline are meted, not in a lump sum 
But as we need it, where He leads through in-betweens of The Outcome 

Where buttercups and upsy-daisy will still spill their grin and groan 
Where people will still drive us crazy and work wear us to the bone 
Where God will never forsake-forget each and every one of us 
Where both Time’s needle and its thread run through Mercy’s Perfect Because 

Where we can fret and fuss and worry, but what good does it achieve 
Dear God above, help us to love You enough to trust and believe 
Then when this year (or perhaps this life) ends, who knows The unknown-ness 
We can look back, as awe runs rife, at Mercy’s Perfect Faithfulness 

© Janet Martin 

Whispering Hope-Daniel O'Donnell and Mary Duff




Thursday, December 31, 2020

Take Time


Who, at the Hinge of Old Year's end to New Year's start doesn't not contemplate Time?
Farewell, Old Year.

...you do not know what tomorrow will bring. 
What is your life? 
For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.
James 4:14

How will we spend time's coins?
What will we have to show for it;
this mist that appears for a little while,
these days of grass?


1 Peter 1:24-25
For, 
All people are like grass,
and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall,
25but the word of the Lord endures forever.” c
And this is the word that was preached to you.




Take time; this thing that transports us from cradle to the silent grave 
It wears the cares and noisy fuss of we abreast its teeming wave 
its momentum of moments metes morn’s virgin streets to you and I 
And gathers as it grants, the fetes that compose Past’s collective sigh 

Take time; Soul’s Sacred Rubicon whereon there is no turning back 
Where the first breath sets us upon an all-important, one-way track 
Where present-sprees and centuries are not so very far apart 
And everybody ought to seize what each dawn frees, with awestruck heart 

Take time to contemplate the Gate that waits to swing but once, for all 
Where nothing else can compensate when it comes to the Gospel Call 
And no one can afford to scoff and cater to indifference 
When it comes to the subject of Offering and Deliverance 

Take time to get down on your knees and make peace with the God of grace 
For who knows when this life will cease and we will meet Him face to face 
Where those who believe will receive faith’s glorious inheritance 
But those who rejected God’s pleas, to suffer Choice’s consequence 

Take time; its transitory isle nobody outsmarts or outlives 
Our mist appears a little while then vanishes to He who gives 
And what would be the point of it, but for the opportunity 
Of a lifetime, to inherit what everyone must wait to see 

© Janet Martin 

I heard a minister make the comment that 
if everyone while on earth was given but a glimpse of either Heaven or hell,
hell would be empty; so awesome Heaven, so awful hell

Before this year ends, if you have not done so,
 please do not put off what tomorrow does not promise to give;
opportunity to make your peace with God
and receive the gift of eternal life
as you repent and believe.

1 John 1:9
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins
 and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

(It's powerful to listen to the words of this song as if it is written
for each of us, personally!)







Tuesday, December 8, 2020

A Face-to-Face With Father Time (no mask required ;-)

 

Yesterday included a tour along a photo-path,
How bitterest-sweetest is Time's Aftermath
.and mean-whilst our
water-woe saga continues😢




So far they have discovered the alarm's sensor-ball stuck so it did
not notify us that the pump in the tank,  installed during previous water-woes
had taken a holiday!

“Man who is born of woman 
Is of few days 
and full of trouble.
Job 14:1

But we all know 
both highs and lows 
follow the same path to 
What Once Was!


You leave, and do not grieve the love 
In hours we held dear 
As echoes ride thy timbre of 
A day-week-month, then year 

How doth thy gossamer design 
Affixed with grin and groan 
Plant and purge Verge’s vapour vine 
In plots of skin and bone 

Where lowest lows and highest highs 
And all points in between 
Are reduced to the husk of sighs 
Where starry eyes had been 

You stretch and squeeze and startle us 
With ways as old as you 
But to the student-heart of us 
It feels foreign and new 

As we, with brunt of blue-gray-gold 
Become attuned to things 
Like what is hinged to have-and-hold 
With fluttering heart-strings 

I do not picture you as crass
But oh, the art you steal
Takes the apprentice of your class
Aback at how we feel

You leave behind the aftermath 
Of all you put us through 
Then kindly grace life’s beaten path 
With Today, Ever New 

© Janet Martin