Like Whispers or Hope's Great Passageway...

 Yesterday, (Sunday morning) while together,

 our church-family received the sorrowful news of the sudden passing of another of our members, 

A beloved husband, dad and grandpa!
We will miss you Clayton, but are comforted to know your cares are past!

The song that long spilled from leaf-flowers fair

Is growing softer in its changing keys

As orchestral estrangements ride the breeze

That gallops through the trees like steads of air

To scatter in its wake a lake of leaves

‘There is a time to plant and to uproot’

The husk of dawn to dusk shucked underfoot

Like whispers that love celebrates and grieves

And none retrieves, but like a surging sea

That rolls toward the shore; Time takes its toll

While flust'ring our clear path to the goal

As we are propelled toward what will be

On a forceful, unpredictable tide

Oh, God our help in ages past, abide

The canopy of variegated green

That lured us from heat-rippled field and street

And drew us to its cooler, grassy seat

Is red and gold with blue holes worn between

…and we are at a loss for words it seems

To perfectly and properly express

This tug-of-heart that vexes happiness

And like the frost-kissed tree, undresses dreams

Insisting that we take a closer look

At often quick and easy reasoning

As tick and tock applies its seasoning

Of fallen leaves, like whispers in a book

Where Aftermath and Imminence collide

Oh God, our help in present-tense, abide

The future is a far and foreign world

The past, places and faces we recall

...as tender tears in soft surrender fall

Like whispers into gentler thoughts unfurled

Because as seasons pass we start to see

The subtlety with which a life is spent

Where everything we have is simply lent

And all relinquished in eternity

Breath seized by death; veil lifts at curtain-close

Sod, sea and sky dissolve into a mist

And all that was before does not exist

As we behold the Destiny we chose

Oh God, o’er Hope’s Great Passageway preside

Oh God, our help in days to come, abide

© Janet Martin

 There is a time to weep...

Ecc.3:1-8

There is a time for everything,
    and a season for every activity under the heavens:

²     a time to be born and a time to die,
    a time to plant and a time to uproot,
³     a time to kill and a time to heal,
    a time to tear down and a time to build,
⁴     a time to weep and a time to laugh,
    a time to mourn and a time to dance,
⁵     a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
    a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
⁶     a time to search and a time to give up,
    a time to keep and a time to throw away,
⁷     a time to tear and a time to mend,
    a time to be silent and a time to speak,
⁸     a time to love and a time to hate,
    a time for war and a time for peace.