To the Trailblazers...That Were and Are

Here is where we live

Where brave hearts fought to free the land

Where we lie and count stars and night

Or dare to dream dreams big and grand

Here is where we live

Their hardship, happiness and need

Cultivated Inheritance

They cleared the fields where we plant seed

Here is where we live

Homes dot the counterpane of years

In towns and countryside, commerce

Conceived by their blood-sweat-prayers-tears

Here is where we live

And place our foot and fingerprints

To circumstance with our response

That soon becomes Inheritance

© Janet Martin

Time's Three-fold Flower...

Silk-soft, Imminence hovers, where Now flowers, fades and falls

Nevermore to return, save in thought’s echo-favored halls

We live this life ‘in limbo’ between what was and will be

Where all we hold for certain is Time’s opportunity

Here, where felled petals flounder new appointments burst the pod

Its full bloom still a mystery, save in the Hand of God

Where this ‘in limbo’ would confound our forward flight with fear

But for the confidence we have that He is ever near

This birthing-place of memories is sacred ground, the heart

Quickens at the mere wonder of what morrow might impart

Where we are held ‘in limbo’ yet, not dangling in mid-air

But cradled in the Certainty of God’s kindness and care

How hard would be love’s joy if Imminence were hapless fate

How agonizing this ‘in limbo’ would be as we wait

With bated breath for death; how hopeless every step we brave

If Destiny led, not to God, but to a stone-cold grave

Imminence hovers, covers us with the awareness of

The ephemeral fabric that weaves our live-laugh-love

And this ‘in limbo’ state of being would torment each hour

Without this peace; The Knowing Who ordains time’s three-fold flow’r

© Janet Martin

‘In Limbo’ sort of describes my mornings as I wait to see if the supply teacher I just started babysitting for will get a call to work. Her mornings are ‘in limbo’ too, until after a certain hour. (we both thought she would get a call today but not so far)

… and then as I thought about it I came to the conclusion that no matter what we plan we all live ‘in limbo’ of what is to come beyond our control, but never God’s!

Fulcrum

 

All those things that we recall are molded where Now-moments fall

Future hinges onto Past

Ether-spectrum arching where

Present ever spreads its path

Fulcrum of our 'here to there'

Everything exists in Now

What once was or yet will be

We cannot  touch or bestow

Rearrangements to its lea

Now; a state forever fixed

Through our touch Time wends its way

Present is the binding twixt

Tomorrow and Yesterday

Awesome, ephemeral Now

Future leans potency on

Present's mystic moment-flow

And the shadows it will spawn

Janet Martin

The Future

PAD Challenge day 10: write a future poem

The Future is at the mercy

Not of Past but Present

It leaves in its wake

Outgrown shoes,

Cookies crumbs

And echoes of what once was

The Future dreams…

…'of living in the UK because

She like the rain’

She tells me

Over breakfast

And morning prayers

The Future boards school-buses

Consuming much more

Than we know

As it strips the Present

Of its offering

Before it is Past

The Future bounces basket-balls

With eyes on a skyline

Of endless possibility,

Home is a launch-pad

To destinations

Unknown

Here they come,

Blue-green-brown-eyed

Blond-brunette potential

The Future; at the mercy

Of choices we make

Today

© Janet Martin

Today Matt’s classmate (Gr. 10) is getting his foot amputated in hopes of ridding his body of cancer. While his buddies dream of baseball, driving, girls…Colton dreams of having a Future.

Hugs and prayers, Colton and family.

Tomorrow's Hope

PAD challenge Day 10: write a future poem

The future has a funny way

Of turning into past

This little cup we call Today

Is emptied far too fast

All Unknown in tomorrow lies

No one can know its lot

The future, though we fantasize

Is never what we thought

I could not bear today’s regale

Or hear its melody

If someone drew aside the veil

From morrow’s mystery

We chase the sun across the skies

Yet every night it slips

Into an ocean of Good-byes

Beyond our finger-tips

One foot and then the other, love

Through both life’s good and ill

Tomorrow never really comes

Yet is today’s refill

The Hand from which Time’s moment’s rain

In gasps of joy or sorrow

Does not falter but will remain

Beneath every tomorrow

© Janet Martin

 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Heb. 13:8

Of Farewells Never Spoken...a message to the Past

 Pad Challenge day 3: Write a message poem

Somehow we brave the silence where farewells were never told

Time’s silver strings a labyrinth of dreaming and despair

Moments mete minute messages; night-ness and morning gold

We fill its rooms with vanity and memory and prayer

Oh, I have strained to touch you but Time’s hours intervene

The busyness of Bygone is a double-edg-ed grief

Where laws of hope and heartache poise twixt ‘will be’ and ‘has been’

In moment-meted mercy of desire and relief

A sea of echoes rushes through the hollowness of want

Futile to fret and hunger for a ripple in its grasp

Life’s hierarchy of happiness is not within the taunt

Of farewells never spoken, but in moments that we clasp

The girth of Past expands, yet we are ever far apart

For slipping through our fingers is Time’s tender moment-string

Those farewells never spoken shape the treasures of the heart

Thus we lift up each moment-cup to drink its offering

© Janet Martin

When I Dreamed You...

When I dreamed you

You laughed

And played

Into my fantasy

But now you’re here

Those phantoms years

Morphed to Reality

Today
There isn’t much about you

That I can quite recall

But simply this;

You’re nothing like

I pictured you at all

© Janet Martin

Yesterday something suddenly sparked words of a wise friend.

Janet, she murmured, ‘the future is never like we pictured it, is it?

Imminent Change

It drips to the quiet

A somnolent strain

Intangible trembling

Of imminent change

Nothing lasts forever

Nothing stays the same

We live in a moment

Of imminent change

Hill-top or valley

Or wide open range

Are ever the pathway

To imminent change

What must be will be

We cannot re-arrange

The way of a moment

And imminent change

Live freely, love fully

And think it not strange

That life is a journey

Of imminent change

© Janet Martin

On some nights I feel it keenly and then I'm so thankful that

  Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Heb. 13:8

Who Knows?

Who knows what the impending season holds

Or landscapes poised to cradle the embrace

Of Time’s imbuement ere the past enfolds

The serenade of moments sealed in place

Who knows what may befall in the half-breath

Of present we inhale; history’s clasp

Exhales in laughter, tears, in life and death

Who knows what waits beyond our present-gasp?

Who sees the crypt groaning with broken dreams?

The obscure deaths within, not eulogized

Or where the private tear of sorrow gleams

Because we grieve alone the dream that died

And who can tell the measure of a man

Beneath the quiet veil of skin; God can

© Janet Martin

This morning, as I stared across the mute landscape

I caught myself wondering what would transpire before these fields are green again...

One Certainty Abides...

Poetic Bloomings invites us to attempt The Sonnet.


The SONNET is a poem, properly expressive of a single, complete thought, idea, or sentiment. It consists of 14 lines, usually in iambic pentameter, with rhymes arranged according to one of certain definite schemes. In the strict or Italian form it is divided into a major group of 8 lines (the octave) followed by a minor group of 6 lines (the sestet). An a-b-b-a, a-b-b-a pattern became the standard for Italian sonnets. For the sestet there were two different possibilities: c-d-e-c-d-e and c-d-c-c-d-c. In time, other variants on this rhyming scheme were introduced, such as c-d-c-d-c-d.
The English form break the poem into 3 quatrains followed by a couplet. Each line containing ten syllables and written in iambic pentameter, in which a pattern of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable is repeated five times. The rhyme scheme in a Shakespearean (English) sonnet is a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g; the last two lines are a rhyming couplet. Alternate Rhyme Scheme: a-a-b-b, c-c-d-d, e-e-f-f, g-g

Future does not conform to fantasy

We cannot glimpse the portend of its will

Nor does it murmur hints of good or ill

We press in moments to its mystery

Desires of the heart will ebb and flow

And fickle are the wishes of our want

The past seeks to remind, to teach or haunt

The wise man learns to learn then let it go

One knows our future’s intricate design

While we were still a whisper in the womb

He shaped the numbered days of our bloom

Into His perfect will our wills resign

One certainty abides in our defense

From seeds of choice we reap its consequence

© Janet Martin

The Vexation of the Unknown...

We cannot write away longing or desire

Nor diminish space by the hex of poetry

But we can languish in a syllable’s fire

And revel in the vexing of what still might be

J~