Blink-Ink or Weight/Gate of Imminence

This poem wanted to keep rolling, like waves toward a shore

because often we blink; and what once was will be no more

Where Time's persistent tolling is a very fine-tuned gong

and no one knows how near or far we are to its So Long...

Today a grieving family is laying their precious nine-year old boy to rest🙏💔

What we think would have been Best must rest in the hands

of the Giver and Taker of life/time; Blessed be the name of the Lord.

It drives deep in the heart once more

this sacred reality poured from Job's lips in ancient days...

And he said: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, 

And naked shall I return there.

The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away;

Blessed be the name of the LORD.”

Job 1:21

Not one of us knows how soon what we have been given will be taken!

or when our book of life will be eternally bound as its last thread is severed.

Let's not take blink-ink for granted.

We blink it seems and night burns pink along earth’s eastward edge

The brink of a new day turns molten gold with mercy’s pledge

Unfurling, like an ocean we can sense but cannot see

Time’s weight of imminence rushing shores of eternity

…where tears, so many tears convey depths of both joy and grief

Of longing and fulfillment, apprehension and relief

Where years like a four-season barge traverse Time’s surf of air

And where no care or charge is too large to fit into prayer

Where oft the unexpected perplexes dreams dearly held

God’s patient purpose vexes man as Plan’s framework is felled

Where Time never stands still but forges on, through high and low

Where break of day soon spills into dusk’s gorgeous afterglow

…and then, we blink; the east burns pink, star-dazzle disappears

The brink of yesterday linked to the gray of yester-years

The green of youth at the mercy of truth’s unflinching stride

Its uncouth education borne on morn-to-morning tide

And nobody is exempt from forums of Much to Learn

We blink; and feast upon leased crumbs of summer’s sudden turn

While thoroughfares beyond our touch hinge to a new threshold

We blink; already dawn has shed its blush of pink and gold…

Where we (all poets in a sense) splash through ink-wells refilled

We rush the gates of imminence with ways and means, God-willed

Where verse on verse, we bless or curse, filled page soon strewn behind

Where blink on blink the ink dries in a book that God will bind

© Janet Martin

The Sands of Time are Sinking