Saturday, July 31, 2021

Almost August...

 'Where harvest fields surrender yields that capture heart and eye'


'In the sheen of sunflowers beaming from sage-bristled stalks'


'Where gardens grin and we begin to gather in toil’s laud'


Its almost August; month of age-old accolades renewed
Where morning, ripe with golden sun highlights sweeps silver-dewed
Where harvest fields surrender yields that capture heart and eye
As crickets start to serenade the ending of July

It’s almost August; beauty-tones delight the commonplace
In purple loosestrife, chicory, yarrow and Queen Ann’s lace
Where gardens grin and we begin to gather in toil’s laud
As fruit and flower melodies spill through our touch to God

It’s almost August; heartstrings get tangled in hollyhocks
In the sheen of sunflowers beaming from sage-bristled stalks
In the keening awareness in each honey-suckle bloom
Of moments weaving echoes from the threads of summer’s loom

It’s almost August; hummingbirds and honey-bees abound
We take off shoes to stir the dust and dew of holy ground
To revel in the bevel of a bowl tipped upside down
To showcase blue, blue eons on a cloud-disheveled crown

It’s almost August; weep not for the parting but give thanks
For bloom-embellished garden paths and lily-laden banks
For arms we cannot see that draw and sweep us off our feet
As wonder and desire meet in tangos, bittersweet

It’s almost August; farewell, farewell, my darling chérie
My sweet July, we cannot keep at bay time’s surging sea
But, come what may, of August’s day, July's memories made
Are gathered in a coffer no hand of time can invade

© Janet Martin





Friday, July 30, 2021

Prime of Grace


As I opened my eyes after
bringing before the Lord my fears, cares, gratitude and hopes
the sun burst over the horizon to crown new day 
with the declaration of God's glory!




Psalm 5:3 BSB
In the morning, O LORD, You hear my voice;
 at daybreak I lay my plea before You and wait in expectation.




 
The prime of time is blushing where Today is always new
The rhythm of Reason rushing its melodists through and through
Past’s phoenix taunts trust’s trial-run where oft we slip and slide
(So many wily ways to sun and preen feathers of pride)

The prime of life presents itself in Time’s most perfect form
Where, with crumbs brushed from yester-shelf a brand-new day is born
Soft-wafted pink and gold beguiles and fills our smiles with awe
While lofty ‘think’, oft bold, defiles, if thought rivals God’s law

The prime of hope and dream’s crescendo floods the earth with light
The clime/climb forged from bygone’s memento births morn’s maiden flight
Where all together we must weather what dawn’s spawn will bring
To test the leather of faith’s tether, oft with suffering

The prime of time is streaming through the Hand that gives and takes
Where live-and-learn is teeming with happiness and heartaches
As we proceed where want and need in fearless fathoms flow
But never can exceed God’s primal grace whereby we go

© Janet Martin








Lam.3:22-23
Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed,
Because His compassions fail not.
They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.

Thursday, July 29, 2021

Momentous Joy

My heart melted with joy
as I hosted my first guests in the new garden nook today😊💗
And the conversation was second to none!
Such as; what they will be when they grow up!
One is going to take over the home-farm 
and become a vet so they will never need to pay a vet again!
One is going to be a dietician like her mother
and one is going to be a ballerina
(guess which one is going to be the ballerina😍)
Wow! How I love these gals💕



a moment's joy is plenty as it fills our present cup
and drips in friendly cadence to the heart-shape we hold up


from love's big tea-pot tipping somewhere out of reach and sight
a moment's joy fills the mundane with sunshine-steeped delight


a kind reward to whispers poured from Learning's broken jar
a moment's joy makes beautiful exactly where we are

Janet Martin~





Wednesday, July 28, 2021

Eden's Shadow or Enchanted By Glimpses...





I finally have a garden bench!
(After 'rescuing' a dilapidated wicker bench
on a Sunday afternoon drive
from a backroad ditch.)
Nothing that a quilt and cushion
 and a few strings to bind sags
couldn't fix!
A person can get downright comfy in a garden corner
at the end of a busy day!😊



The place where Eden’s shadow falls 
is framed in friendly hollyhocks
Sunflowers deck its bower-walls; 
breeze-batons tease bean-vines, corn stalks
Love’s toil is sweet where spoil of seeds 
enchants us with glimpses of He
Who smiles, while stunning us indeed
with isles of creativity

The place where Eden’s shadow lies 
is crowned with skies, cerulean
Its glints and hints of paradise
unbound in nature's diadem
Where garden dirt is mined for treasure 
carrot-orange and beet-red
A gratifying kind of pleasure; 
hand of God and mortal wed 

The place where Eden’s shadow spans 
is cursed with pestilence and pain
Unlike the first garden where man, 
because of sin could not remain
But still, the beauty of the Lord 
is poured through gourd-pod-plumed goodness
Where duty reaps a rich reward 
of culinary happiness

The place where Eden’s shadow waits 
to fling ajar gates that God sealed
Grants glimpses on heaped dinner plates 
as we give thanks for harvest-yield
For mercy’s lavish 'let there be' 
As you and I with hope and hurt
Touch the hemline of Majesty 
through windows set in garden dirt

© Janet Martin

 

  

Tuesday, July 27, 2021

Of Logic and Love

 

Logic and love (aka head and heart)
Can be at constant odds
until we humbly strive to start
to serve no other gods
Until we love the Lord our God
with heart, soul, strength and mind
We cannot be all that we ought
For we are God designed

In writing there is the constant battle 
of blending both heart and head.
To write with only the heart we tend to end up with Beauty
but not always truth. 
To write with only our heads may spout wisdom's facts and truth
but without beauty!
When we parent/love with only our heads 
we are at the risk of being too harsh.
When we parent/love with only our hearts 
we risk being too soft!

Lord, as new day dissolves the dark
and we embark anew
Lord, birth in both our heads and hearts
fresh awareness of You
By the direction of Your Word
To seek You with faith undeterred



The head hosts logic’s hot debates
The heart, the part that loves and hates
The head can wield a rigid rod
The heart, the part that yields to God

The heart is vile without God’s voice
To reconcile the guile of choice
The head holds the tower of thought
The heart holds God’s power, or not

Until the head and heart align
And one to the other resign
The head will be the part that fools
The heart with logic's art of rules

© Janet Martin

 “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart 
and with all your soul 
and with all your strength 
and with all your mind’ 
and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
Luke 10:27

The heart is deceitful above all things, 
and desperately wicked: who can know it?
Jer.17:9

Monday, July 26, 2021

Ah, Summer

 Ah, hands laden with garden-fare...




ah, sand between our toes...




Ah, silver-sequined taper melting moments dearly prized
You strew to past’s cast paper joy and sorrow synchronized
Scents of your passage mingle in incense of dust and dew
As our senses tingle with the awareness of you

Ah, eager expectation meshed with echo-aftermath
Shards of dashed celebration deck impressions of a path
That wends and winds its way from where we were to where we are
Fresh from a world of yesterdays we leap from star to star

Ah, land of lengthened daylight before night draws down its bars
And scatters flowers, silver-white in bowers bent with stars
Ah, grand cathedral brimming with winter’s bloom-dreams come true
While sight is barely skimming the fringe of what God can do

Ah, hands laden with garden-fare, ah, sand between our toes
Arbors flowing with silken, sunny honeysuckle prose
Ah, hill and hollow frilled with skeins and skeins of Queen Ann’s lace
Ah, lily-tallow spilled and willed to life’s last resting place

Ah, petal-tear ellipses, bit o’ salt, a bit o’ sweet
Where auburn soon eclipses gold and green of corn and wheat
Where late-day diamonds dancing on a bit o’ lake-lent hue
Crown points of exclamation with love’s stinging residue

Ah summer; soulful salutation of blooms and bare feet
Of heat-waves rolling over shores where earth and heaven meet
Of longing's gaping canyon overflowing with your hymn
Ah summer, full of reasons to be glad and sing and sing

© Janet Martin

Where late-day diamonds dancing on a bit o’ lake-lent hue
Crown points of exclamation with love’s stinging residue...








Of Dwindling Kindling

 

Because winter fireplaces/woodstoves take a lot of kindling 
we are already on the look-out at the end of people's driveways 
where camp-fire wood is for sale.


Reminds me of a different kind of kindling, 
always dwindling far too fast...


This hour where the flower bluffs
On beauty’s candlestick


Cannot escape the hand that snuffs
Its flicker from the wick



Now frets upon heart’s deep desire
A fond, intoning knell
Where joys that kindled friendship’s fire
Have dwindled to farewell

The dying embers on a hearth
Where round we gathered, oft
Wakens in us the dusk of mirth
In footsteps, keen yet soft

…where pain bends pleasure’s maiden form
In pangs of sweet refrain
To take the tender heart by storm
With ‘till we meet again’

…until in some morrow’s delight
While wounds of parting heal
We’ll tend the echoes that ignite
What farewell cannot steal

P-s-s-s-t! ash to ash and dust to dust
The quickened pulse will fell
Death veils frail trails of wanderlust
With whispers of farewell

This hour where the flower bluffs
On beauty’s candlestick
Cannot escape the hand that snuffs
Its flicker from the wick

Then cherish well heart's deep desire
Beneath high-noon's blue bell
Where joys that kindle friendship's fire
Are dwindling to farewell

© Janet Martin



Manifest Evidence

 

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; 
as I have loved you, that you also love one another. 
 By this all will know that you are My disciples, 
if you have love for one another.” 
John 13:34-35


With the abundant rain we've been blessed with
in southern Ontario, Canada,
fields and gardens beam 
with Nature's/Mercy's opulent pleasure!







The most beautiful bloom 
in the garden of life
is love
Love is patient and kind...
1 Cor.13:4

Not by grand pomp and show
Or flourish of fine word
But by our love, others will know
That we follow the Lord

…not by the high or low
Of status, color, creed
But by our love, others will know
That we are Christ’s, in deed

Not for glory or praise
Or Duty’s rigid bent
But by compassion’s gentle ways
Love’s grace is evident

Not to create a throne
For self-indulgent pride
But by our love, God’s love is shown
His glory magnified

© Janet Martin



Sunday, July 25, 2021

The Music of the Heart

As long as God writes the melody
the heart will never weary
of trying to set it free...

So much beauty to set the heart on fire!






A song can never spill the whole
of a heart’s melody
No bard as yet can bare the soul’s
full hymn in poetry

In the depths of the commonplace
Swirled worlds of splendor span
Like stars in the eternal space
Beyond the lens of man

Then, while we grapple with the surge
Of wonder’s splurge and laud
May whisper and desire merge
In pure worship to God

Pray we may never cease to thrill
to do our humble part
As we are awed by God, to spill
the music of the heart

© Janet Martin

I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart; 
I will glorify your name forever.
Psalm 86:12

Psalm 9:1
I will give thanks to the LORD with all my heart; 
I will recount all Your wonders.