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

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!

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…