Invitation Card

Blush ribbon teases the dividing line twixt night and dawn

Before the sky is wide awake and all its slumber gone

Life’s daily grind both cruel and kind spills time beneath our feet

For we are creatures born to suffer for our bread and meat

That far-off land of monuments where all our memories dwell

Will soon claim what we shape today within its silver swell

But now, before the quietude of midnight fills this span

We have an invitation to do all the good we can

The circuit of the sun is swift and does not linger long

Before we hear the farewell notes of wafting vesper-song

And time is short; its rubric of brief three-score year and ten

Is not a guarantee; and passes like the formless wind

The past is bottomless and always hungry, so it seems

It brushes boyhood from a lad within its moment-streams

And what may seem a trifling portion in its tick-tock pantomime

Accumulates its day-by-day to render a lifetime

A Gracious Hand of beckoning flings wide hope’s gleaming gates

Discourse of daily reckoning begins; dawn dissipates

Where we behold God’s invitation gladdening Time’s sky

And how we use His offering is up to you and I

© Janet Martin