Middle-age Mother's Musing...

To let go without losing wonder

To sense on the tense tides of change

So much yet to master and ponder

So much yet for time to estrange

Where torn between worlds past and future

The present runs rife with life’s charge

And wounds that no surgeon can suture

Slashed deep in the heart of the barge

Where it is too late to untangle

Loosed threads that have severed their ties

While we are still trying to wrangle

The rebel that rouses our sighs

And rushes like winds through the wild woods

Charging like a maddened platoon

That crushes the bloom of lost childhoods

To shards shaped like echoes of June

Where oft, like a soft summer’s vesper

Time’s Maestro immerses the breeze

With murmurs of morrow and yester

Of maybes and memories

© Janet Martin

Ah, Motherhood

Happy Belated Mother's Day!

Hectic happiness swooshed yesterday away 

before I had a chance to do a post! 

It's nice to have a day to reflect on family's imperfect 'Happy', isn't it?!

Words of love whether texted, phoned, told face to face or carded are precious treasures

for mothers to tuck away and pull out on a 'rainy' day!

So thankful for my mom!

Ah, Hardest Best that love allots

Of test mingled with joy

Of learning lessons more than once

As She trains girl and boy

Ah, grandest gift that life can give

In spite of constant cares

As motherhood becomes the sieve

Through which she pours her prayers

Where love like none before or hence

(Save God who authors Good)

Will grant such sacred recompense

As humble motherhood/parenthood

Ah, vessel made of flesh and blood

Yet mighty, by God’s grace

Her form must bear the tearing flood

Of birthing human race

There ending and beginning meld

Where earth and heaven meet

As nothing love-borne is withheld

From tiny hands and feet

God, hold her hands as she holds hands

That pull and pull away

Help her where love’s lifelong demands

Teach and teach her to pray

For motherhood is not a game

No fame highlights its goals

Mother is charged with Heaven’s Claim

She cares for living souls

God, bless this Hardest Best of All

Of bitter-sweetest Good

For there is no other such call

Like that of motherhood

© Janet Martin

Mother-to-Mother...

 When hubby asks me what we talked about (on those rare occasions when moms go out)

more often than not I reply 'mostly mom-stuff'

I wondered what took Victoria so long to fuel up the Journey...

until she walked in with "Happy Early Mother's Day!"

Though we may not have met, as yet

We understand each other

Because we share love’s kindred care

When we become a mother

… for motherhood, so dear and good

Will fix within our bearing

A strange alloy of grief and joy

Born out of deepest caring

Where mother’s love will rise above

The circumstance and reason

Her prayers-tears-smiles fill whiles and miles

Without reserve or season

Who can explain love’s purest pain

When we become a mother

Its charge bestows high-fives and blows

Quite unlike any other

This humbling, fumbling, stumbling Best

This heart-string-honing tether

This lifelong faith-trust-hope-strength test

Binds all mothers together

For motherhood, so dear and good

Oft startles and confounds us

So, mother-to-mother, we need each other

To be God’s arms around us

© Janet Martin

Your Mother's Heart...

 

It often looks like nothing much

Packed lunches; broom and mop

The tidy up and ‘extra-touch’

Of home-sweet-home on top

It might just look like ‘shoes to fill’

Or fresh-baked bread or pie

Or laundry washed and heaped until

It seems to reach the sky

Or hug and kiss, goodnight, sleep tight

Or ‘don’t forget to pray’

Or fingers washed or noses wiped

Or teardrops brushed away

…or window-sills with flowerpots

Or glass bowl filled with fruit

Or scolding naughty little tots

Lest seed of sin takes root

Or quirks that sometimes make you laugh

(Or roll your eyes a smidge)

Or keepsakes, like the photographs

That cover up the fridge

What do you see, dear girl and boy

Just dishes washed and dried?

After hot, home-cooked supper-joy

When it is cold outside

Does it just look like life to you?

Or chores performed in vain?

Shake-off-the-mats-and-run-the-vacuum

Through-the-house-again

Well, I would like to tell dear

These common works of art

Are not all that they would appear

They are your mother’s heart

© Janet Martin

Things About Your Mother You Should Know...

PAD Challenge day 9: Time for our second Two for Tuesday of the month!
 Pick one prompt or use both…your choice!

1. Write a love poem. All you need is love.
2. Write an anti-love poem. Or not.

 Her children rise up and call her blessed;
    her husband also, and he praises her:

Prov.31:28

Dear Son and/or Daughter

from your mother

Your mother will always love you

With heart-strings ironclad

When you hurt she suffers with you

Your triumphs make her glad

From the first time she held you near

From your first newborn cry

Love became life itself, my dear

Bigger than summer's sky

Her love for you gives purpose to

Life’s mundane tasks because

A Love bigger than hers shines through

The little things she does

He helps her through the hardest parts

This Charge God rendered her

Is not for Woman Faint of Heart

When she becomes Mother

For you her dreams and reasons change

For pangs of birth begin

A mother's life-long labor-pains

Hug, hold, let go, scold, grin

Her prayers could fill up an ocean

Your cares become hers too

Hers is a dogged devotion

Unwavering and true

Her teaching becomes her learning

Her learning brings heartaches

So forgive her while she is earning

Her certificate of mistakes

For all she really longs for

In her imperfect best

Is motherhood's highest honor

That you will call her blessed

Then whether mother is thirty-two

Or wizened ninety-five

Love her, for oh, she will love you

As long as she is alive

© Janet Martin