And The Crowd Goes Wild

Sum of a Year

Wink-blink

Ope-close

Here it is

And there it goes!

Like mist that melts from morning’s verge

Like airborne-tides that ebb and surge

From dawn to dusk dust leaves its mark

Like sparks that spiral on the dark

As expectation’s hopeful cheer

Reflects upon a soldered year

Of heaven-tendered highs and lows

From its first scene to curtain close

The crowd goes wild, stands to applaud

The unwavering grace of God

Eyes fixed upon a mystic Door

Where nobody has been before

Where faith, not fear will be our Guide

For Love Unfailing will preside

Hallelujah.

Amen

© Janet Martin

Happy Last-day-of-2018!

a tender look back on what has been

 As humble hope hails Majesty

From a highway hinged to eternity

All cupped in the Ever-Able Hands

Of He who pours and snuffs time's sands 

 Jude 1:21
Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.

A Hymn For Him Inspired by Farewell-fired 'Things'

The line in this poem; *And coffee with a slice of cheese
Was inspired by my being deliciously spoiled this Christmas
with two of my most favorite things in the world... Coffee and cheese!

This poem is a little collection of this spent year's mementos ...

For jars filled with forget-me-nots

For flower pots on windowsills

For innocence of tiny tots

For wonder’s unexpected thrills

For circle-notes on puddled lane

For leaf-boats on its little lakes

For laughter’s silver-sparkle strains

For supper soup and birthday cakes

For scenes that twinkle through our touch

But rest forever in the heart

For everyone we love so much

Whether together or apart

For hope for things to come, where Past

Has such a hearty appetite

Yet each day hoists a virgin mast

And bids us sail toward the night

Not swaddled yet in death’s cold bod

Not blindfolded or bound in chains

But free to see, hear and applaud

Each Masterpiece that God sustains

For the fond bond of true friendship  

For home-sweet-home and family

For August afternoons that drip

Like honey to a cup of tea

For wealth of health and strength for toil

For hard work’s well-earned beauty-sleep

For summer’s unmerited spoil

Where nature gifts what none can keep

For fuzzy socks and apple pie

*And coffee with a slice of cheese

For four-season wind-lullaby

And thousand unnamed luxuries

For what we understand, or not

Where we are all students of life

For Mercy’s unwavering lot

Reaffirmed where new day runs rife

For what we name and what we miss

Dear Lord, accept our hymn of praise

And keep us ever keened to this;

The Never-ending End of Days

For mantles made of morning mist

For candles made of autumn’s leaf

For the refurbished to-do list

For wrinkles proving Time is chief

For laughter of both heart and brook

For After Dark’s strange Art unfurled

For the barge of a story-book

And armchair, to travel the world

For Goodness none of us have earned

For lessons gleaned from what has been

For woods when springtime has returned

With sundry-splendored shades of green

For promises still being met

For awesomeness of simple things

Like buttered bread, common and yet

It makes us feel like queens and kings

For holding before letting go

For babies bouncing on our knee

For ‘always something we don’t know’

The beauty of Discovery

For Old Year tumbling from Time’s sill

For New Year’s intangible Yet

Like a big jar that we will fill

With flowers we still have not met

© Janet Martin

New Year Madrigal

 Wishing you a blessed New Year!

'"The LORD bless you and keep you;
The LORD make His face shine on you, 
And be gracious to you;…
Num.6:24-25

The notes of living rise and fall

Composing Bygone’s madrigal

Across thought’s scale of high and low

Echoes of loss and triumph blow

They trace the place where constant change

Cannot return to rearrange

The bars where stars and darkness spar

So very near yet oh, so far

From where we are to where we’ll be

When this New Year is history

And all we do not know begets

The snowy ash of Morrow’s Yet

As retrospect and prospect meet

In dissonant chords, bittersweet

To splay upon yon quiet night

A lay that each today will write

Where the best human race can do

Is trust God’s grace to see us through

© Janet Martin

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

When The Sigh That Seals Goodbye Is Breathed

 Have you begun yet...the evaluation of The Old,

The Resolution of The New?

If when the sigh that seals my cry is cast

And all accomplishment and charge is past

If, when the Author of life snuffs its wick

Like puff of wind across a candlestick

If, when the ebbing toll of day to day

Steals all but Intangible Soul away

If, when this speck of dust I trek and till

Is heaped up like a mole-hill, cold and still

If when the promises I vow to keep

And avid resolutions lie asleep

And all the happiness I held and sought

Is nothing more than someone else’s lot

If, when this glorious task of here and now

Is caught up in That Holy Undertow

Its fragments left with those I leave behind

To gather severed ends of ties that bind

If,when Time's Circumstantial Evidence

Has nothing left to show but recompense

After the Inevitable takes place

And plays its tear-notes on love’s downcast face

Please, may the groundwork where my footsteps fell

Serve those who follow then, and serve them well

May where I worked and wished and hoped and prayed

Be more than just a lot of lost noise made

And when the sigh that seals good-bye is breathed

I pray I leave love's noble Best bequeathed

When the ship called Forever hoists its mast

And seals the sigh that holds my farewell fast

© Janet Martin