Sunday, December 31, 2017

Of Felled Flower-Hours...

Happy last day of 2017!
Thank-you to all of you who drop by this humble poem-porch! 
I appreciate and love you. 
God bless you and yours as we embark on a whole new Unknown
...but for this; God's faithful mercies.






Its summer-songs are sealed
As is each autumn hour   
The winter where Year’s welcome pealed
Yielded to spring’s first flow’r   

A sentimental love
Like mist veiling life’s din
Settles across the annals of
Scenes chronicled within

…where easy come and go
Seems time’s inherent bent
Soft, swift, farewell follows hello
Of day-week-month-Year spent

And where weariness weights
The shoulders of the Old
A ray of newness radiates
Across Time’s dying wold

...where summer songs still wait
As does each autumn hour
And winter is a glorious gate
That leads to spring’s first flow’r

© Janet Martin

Saturday, December 30, 2017

The More We Have Of God...



"The more we have of God, the more of Him we need!"
 This was a line in the first e-mail I opened this morning 
from someone geographically far, far away but prayerfully near!
The other day I posted a poem Heart’s Content naming things that make the heart content…
Hopefully the fullness of all small contentment does not dull but stirs hunger for More of The Giver...

May this song bless and challenge each of us!

Imagine if our want and thought
Would ever kindly lead
To where the more we have of God
The more and more we need

Imagine if, when life is kind
We lingered long with He
Who we call on when faith is blind
And filled with agony

Imagine if our love for More
Would satisfy our greed
Yet rouse a howling hunger for
The more and more we need

Imagine if when Want is filled
It drilled a gaping hole
That craves the love of God until
The body is the soul

© Janet Martin

Ps. 107:8-9
 Let them give thanks to the LORD for His lovingkindness, 
And for His wonders to the sons of men! 

 Psalm 34:10
The young lions do lack and suffer hunger; 
But they who seek the LORD shall not be in want of any good thing.

Luke 1:53
He has filled the hungry with good things, but has sent the rich away empty.

 Matthew 5:6
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

 Matt 19:16-22
 And behold, a man came up to him, saying, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?”  And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments.”  He said to him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  
 The young man said to him, “All these I have kept. What do I still lack?”   
Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, 
and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”  
 When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

Friday, December 29, 2017

Whispers...

  "I feel a strange sense of something like guilt", I said to Victoria. "I'm pouring coffee and making grocery lists while a few miles away a family is making preparation's to bury their teenage son!"
It stirs a sacred reverence for the moment, does it not?!

 
  Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort,  who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.  For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.
2 Cor.1:3-5 


He cups our torn and careworn hearts in hands scarred with love’s testament
He hears the agony of tears where fear and grief and pain torment
He reaches from His throne of grace where words are lost to wordless wail
The Father of mercy and comfort whispers when our whispers fail

He holds us through the flames that test the uttermost of mortal grit
He who wept tears of blood and bore death on the cross understands it
This world is not our home for long; it afflicts man with ceaseless needs
The Father of mercy and comfort whispers peace and intercedes

He gathers up the forlorn cup, replenishes its emptiness
Where we would be completely lost without His faithful promises
Hopeless, helpless, alone, undone; we could not cope without His care
The Father of mercy and comfort whispers hope to man’s despair

He is no harsh and distant judge that does not sympathize with us
This Father too bore awful loss;  His Son upon a cross, Jesus
Thus His compassion overflows; He knows the darkest, deepest vales
He, Father of mercy and comfort whispers love when our love fails

© Janet Martin





Thursday, December 28, 2017

Wonder-lost...



It's a quiet afternoon,
the only sounds are the click of a keyboard in one room
and the clack of a type-writer in the next 
Victoria has long longed for a typewriter 
...since Christmas morning she is the proud owner of one:)

I remarked to her how quiet it is when two people are lost in a world of words...



Lost in a world of words
A pleasant place to be
Where thought is tossed on waves of truth
And footloose fantasy

Through phantom woods we roam
Kicking syllabic dust
Lost twixt a world of home sweet home
And winsome wanderlust

There is no here nor there
We sail and sail away
On nothing but a wooden chair
We touch worlds held at bay

Don’t look for us, my dear
The paths are strange and blurred
Lost somewhere between there and here
In wonder-worlds of word

© Janet Martin



Sentimental Jargon





Across the field steel-rivers blow
And wield a weapon full of snow
Where supper soup and firewood
Have never sounded quite so good

And I will make a pot of tea
Then will you sip a cup with me?
And shall we gently reminisce
O’er ebbs and flows of That and This?

The Warden of a formless clock
Is turning the key in a lock
That soon will seal the gold and gray
Of twenty-seventeen away

Darling, what have we learned from it
Or genuinely earned from it
Will something in its give and take
Soothe farewell’s sentimental ache

And when on soundless hinges Time
Rings out the old year with a chime
That ushers in what none have met
Will we feel hope or sad regret?

Sometimes it seems to me the years
Are but a succession of ‘Cheers’
With a few baffled blinks between
Cold winter’s white, gold summer’s green

Across the field steel-fingered bards
Shake feather-down on quiet yards
Where supper-soup and firewood
Have never sounded quite so good

© Janet Martin