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

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.

In The Morning When I Rise Give Me Jesus

 

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.

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~

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

 

  

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

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

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.