Showing posts with label legacy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label legacy. Show all posts

Thursday, December 6, 2018

The Way We Are...


 Inspired by the tributes to George H. W. Bush
His motto; Preach Christ at all times. If necessary, use words.

George H.W. Bush's historian shares stories that span 9 decades







 Yesterday George, through these loving tributes touched so many more lives in death,
 inspired by his life, not perfect, but well-lived...reminding us as long we we live, Life matters!

We never know whose lives we touch with what we do and say
Or how the way we are will help or hinder someone’s day
how big the smallest lives we shape; the lad at mother’s knee
Is the beginning of the man that he turns out to be

To make the most of here and now is all that we can do
For when the quilt of dusk tucks earth beneath its navy blue
The seal that sets the sun where none of us its course can trace
Preserves those battles lost or won in Bygone’s vast embrace

Where oh, we never know what, down life’s road, one recollects
Or what will paint the pictures only memory resurrects
For what we leave behind becomes a lifetime’s greatest worth
Each numbered day soon strews its dust and ash across the earth

Lord, pray we live each day to day humbly aware of This
That none of us can ever know how near or far death is
Or who is next to cross the ever-mystic Great Divide
While we stand back and wonder what waits on The Other Side  

…where all then, that remains of us is the Permanent How
Of touch and taste tendered to the haste of each Here and Now
The treasure of love’s moments turned into Mission Complete
The measure of a lifetime sealed in other hands and feet

© Janet Martin




Thursday, January 11, 2018

To Today's Legacy-authors





 This is the life-summary of Clarence; a faithful husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather
whose funeral visitation I attended last evening...


Such a testimony causes us to re-evaluate our own Time-expenditure, does it not?

What, when we have writ our story
Will the sum of our days be?
When death gathers up life’s glory
Was it lived for God or ‘me’?

Inhale, exhale, mercy thunders
Granting choice another chance
Morning, heaped with untried wonders
Offers kind deliverance

A new day hinged to spent ages
A new day to make amends
A new day to write on pages
That our final exhale ends

What, when grace ceases its glory
Will the sum of these days be?
When death gathers up life’s story
Was it writ for God or ‘me’?

© Janet Martin

Friday, June 9, 2017

Today, If We Should Pass Away...

A grim reminder of the ephemeral tent of time...
Today, a memorial is being held for a mother of seven killed in a traffic accident on her way to picking up her daughter at piano lessons. 
Tributes of praise for her kind and generous character pour in...

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

Today, if we should pass away
From all that we would leave behind
With nothing left to do or say
Would our legacy be kind?

Today its full abundance pours
In glorious opportunity
An inkwell filled with hope and chores
And God-allotted poetry

Today is like a sacred pen
And Now, a page that God imparts
Whereon we write, before Amen
Seals our legacy in hearts

Today, oh pray we bear in mind
How important ‘the time we took’
And, would our legacy be kind
If today God should close its book

© Janet Martin


 Live, laugh, love.
For who knows; tomorrow
Might spill its trove
In death's tears and sorrow

Thursday, April 9, 2015

Work of Art

When my cousin Robb was 17 his love for art and metal inspired him to 'set up shop' in the corner of a shed on my Uncle Oscar's farm. Now twenty-some years later he works at/owns Thak Ironworks, a business that requires extremely hard work, yet provides an outlet for his talent/passion! His work has been sold world-wide...be it high-end armor, railings, gates, range-hoods and other numerous works of art. Below are a few shots of some of his work. Visit his site for more info and pictures.




Time is a sequence of moments 
From life's kind Giver they pour
and what we do with them will be 
what we are remembered for...

Workmanship is something
That shapes our legacy
We would do well to remember this
In whatever that work may be

So forge from the fire of moments
Love's best with hand and heart
For then the end result will be
A beautiful work of art

Janet~ 

Robb, thank-you again for the impromtu interview.

If you are passing through Floradale, Ontario, check it out!

PAD Challenge day 9; write a work poem







Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Memory Lane





In the dry part of summer
That dirt road turned to golden silk
Ribbon running through corn-clover mead
Feeding freedom in its ethereal ilk
Of unnamed destinies pooled in its thread

Bare-feet dashed, splashing
Down lanes to wild apple trees
Where picnic-baskets spilled their simple fare
In gentle childhood memories
And soda-cracker flavored air

They didn’t recognize the wealth
Of moments pressed into its grass
Where cotton-dresses seemed to shrink too fast
Beneath a blue-sky hour-glass
Insistent on replenishing the Past

…and then they grew too tall
To play where only children climb
Time’s endless afternoons without a care
Until the call of suppertime
Wafted on twilight's purple stair

..as they dashed, splashed
Through golden silk of summer shelled
And moth-balled corduroy of outgrown coats
Quite unaware of pens they held
Or little legacies they wrote

© Janet Martin

This poem took me on a sudden breath-stealing trip down memory-lane

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Heirs of Tomorrow





Yes, sometimes I forget
…it isn’t hard to do
And choose toil’s little odds and ends
Stealing time spent with you

How swift each season flies
A soft and subtle reach
Teasing the baby from our arms
While we hug, hold and teach

Once upon yesterday
We were children, carefree
And never gave a second thought
To love’s wise legacy

The tide that carried us
Still rushes ‘cross the wild
Now we leave in its wide-flung wake
Our footprints for a child

Here run tomorrow’s heirs
To everything we weave
We ought to touch with tender care
The moments in Time’s sieve

A child, but not for long
Time’s keen deliverance
Will leave those things we made for them
As their inheritance

© Janet Martin

Before supper I picked up fresh eggs at a local farm. A little boy was hammering two pieces of scrap wood together in the shed where they keep the eggs. When I asked him what he is making he told me 'a sled’ and without pausing he got up, pinched his creation in a vice-grip and began sawing the end with a small hand-saw. Next I asked him what he is going to use for the part to sit on, and again without pausing in his ‘work’ he replied, ‘oh, I don’t know yet’, his cheeks rosy from cold and exertion and his eyes gold with dream-dust.
What are we leaving these heirs of tomorrow?
…these precious, precious heirs!