A Ruinous Affair

Why can't we learn from the smallest among us?!

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Matt.5:8

Because Writer's Digest has changed their sign-in format 

and because something (likely I am doing wrong) is keeping me out I am unable 

to go to or link to the page where other poets share their verse.

But the prompts are always a fun way to stretch the mind so, better late than never.

Day 5 prompt; For today’s prompt, write a ruin poem. 

The poem could be about visiting some ancient ruins. 

Or you could write about ruining a situation or ruining a recipe 

(I've done both plenty of times in my life).

 But perhaps you're like me and can appreciate the beauty in things 

others considered ruined. 

Either way, write a ruin poem today!

A more serious take on the prompt

The Road to Utter Ruin

I hate the way haters destroy 

What love would build and bless 

Hate ruins any hope of joy 

It strangles happiness 

Hate, evil in its basest form 

Can never work for good 

But reduces to utter ruin 

Where once a country stood 

A country is not made of land 

Its strength not made of steel 

But people joining hand in hand 

Where love alone can heal 

© Janet Martin

a less serious take...

A Ruinous Affair

You rush through me 

A mighty sea 

That no fingers can trace 

And ruin any 

Plans I had 

Toward the commonplace 

You disregard 

Rules, strict and hard 

Set by tick-tocking Time 

You forsake chores 

Without remorse 

For the sake of a rhyme 

You tease and taunt 

The seas of Want 

With adjectives, nouns, verbs 

A tidal wave 

That poets brave/crave 

And only Poem curbs 

You whisper where 

Others breathe air 

Your grand geography 

Is boundless as 

The universe 

Of Possibility 

You ruin the 

Ordinary 

With curious delight 

And make each day 

An escapade 

To What A Poem Might… 

© Janet Martin 

Change Is Not A Comfy Sweater

This post started while hanging out laundry

and contemplating Comfy...

One thing I love in fall is pulling out old sweaters

that have certainly seen better days

but have such a comfy, cozy coming-home feeling!

***

Change is definitely not a comfy sweater!

2020 has forced all of us into certain 'outfits' we would never choose

but must learn to adapt to, and wear!

***

Change keeps us on our toes...

Ballerinas poised on joy's highs and lows

***

Change yanks us from easy chairs 

to balance-beams

Thank God for books; yellow with age 

amidst change-fueled streams

***

Change is much more than a mirror

Playing back the view

Change is like a subtle shearer

Of sheep, and wolves too

***

Change is a symphony of Touch

Give and take synchronized

Look, while we try new shoes and such

It steals The Old we prized

***

Change; inevitable matter of Fact

Stretch if you must but keep Focus intact

Sooner or later, as change takes its toll

It will take all but Creator and Soul

 

***

Change is a strange, familiar thing

As common as a clock

Eternity hinged to a string

Thinned with each tick and tock

***

Tick-tock, tick-tock

If we could see 

Time's filigree unwind

With each tick-tock 

I think we'd all be

More humble and kind

*** 

Change sometimes makes me feel a bit like I am stuffed into 

An outfit snug and stiff, uncomfortable, brand new 

I’d rather wear something kind of threadbare but broken in 

Because I feel much more at home in Routine’s Rags, worn thin 

Change sometimes makes me feel like a child at a wishing well

Or middle-aging student learning how to read and spell 

Where familiar failures and successes are not enough 

To shield me from new guessing-lessons about life and love 

Change sometimes makes me happy but more often breaks the mold 

That feels like so much like my own skin, well-adapted and old 

Till estrangements and fresh arrangements stretch and test and try 

Change is a ladder to stars that keep falling from the sky 

© Janet Martin 

November Dawn Ballad

 

Psalm 59:16
But I will sing of Your strength and proclaim Your loving devotion in the morning. 

For You are my fortress, my refuge in times of trouble.

This is kind of a companion-poem to last night's November Dusk Aria

I leave the windows open for a little to breathe in 

A brittle postlude performed on November’s violin 

It plays the harvest-stubble and the almost-barren limb 

And fills this world of trouble with a Hallelujah Hymn 

Day breaks; a lake of pink and purple bleeds across the sky 

Where not so very long before it wore dusk’s lullaby 

Beneath the brooding keep of Love misunderstood, once more 

Through nuclear flues of starry deep Goodness and Mercy pour 

The landscape splays it naked shape before our gaping eyes 

The cape that draped its crooks and curves in scattered tatters lies 

As summer’s former glory bears the script Of Mice and Men 

Driving home Time’s Old Story we were told, much younger then 

November is a ballad played on stages bloom bereft 

Its melody engages audiences, right and left 

It awes us with the aftermath of flowered paths and such 

And causes us to trust anew The Kind Composer’s Touch 

© Janet Martin

Faithful One, So Unchanging

 

November Dusk Aria

Whiling the While till the supper crew comes home...

Something soft and gentle as November's early twilight mantle falls...

When dusk is like a painting on a pedestal of air 

When earth is reacquainting sod and sea with dimming flare 

When blush-blue velvet duvet shrouds the shoulders of spent day 

It seems a fitting homage to bow our heads and pray 

For never-failing grandeur from a Hand we cannot see 

He tucks November’s contours beneath twilight’s canopy 

And deepens with  sky-mantle, the ebbing landscape until 

Earth is snuffed like a candle on an autumn window-sill 

For articulate tugging on ties no one can define 

As dark of night is hugging dusk’s westward horizon-line

For sense of Gentle Presence staying just beyond our gaze 

Stirring in souls an essence when interpreted, is praise 

It seems fitting to thank Him as history claims its due 

In autumn-twilight anthem, for His never-changing view 

O'er nation against nation, He ushers in evening 

Fans feathers of compassion, tucks the world beneath His wing 

© Janet Martin 

Night Watch Jim Reeves

I Know Who Holds Tomorrow Allison Krauss & Cox Family

Hopeless Until...

Lots of opportunity to analyze all kinds of angles

today as we wait and wait...

because Canada cares!!

What is Man? Johnny Cash

When we begin to contemplate 

The motive for the want we wait 

For; when weighed in the balance of 

The three that remain; faith, hope, love 

When we strip worry down to size

To find Self its ultimate prize

Then when its offense is confessed

And Intention is reassessed

When we come face to face with 'I'

And all the truths that cannot lie

Then we acknowledge, we are dust 

Hopeless, until in God we trust 

© Janet Martin 

Psalm 8

O Lord, our Lord,

How excellent is Your name in all the earth,

Who have set Your glory above the heavens!

2 Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants

You have [b]ordained strength,

Because of Your enemies,

That You may silence the enemy and the avenger.

3 When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,

The moon and the stars, which You have ordained,

4 What is man that You are mindful of him,

And the son of man that You visit[c] him?

5 For You have made him a little lower than [d]the angels,

And You have crowned him with glory and honor.

6 You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands;

You have put all things under his feet,

7 All sheep and oxen—

Even the beasts of the field,

8 The birds of the air,

And the fish of the sea

That pass through the paths of the seas.

9 O Lord, our Lord,

How excellent is Your name in all the earth!

Let's Look If We're Able (at Mercy's set table)

 

Because all of our hearts are kinda in our throats right now

as we wait, pray and wonder...

He wasn't pretty

the first snowman of the year,

but he was loved!

Let’s look if we’re able 

At mercy’s set table 

And leave to the Lord what we ought 

This earth runneth over 

With joys to discover 

Like a four-season garden plot 

The blessings that matter, 

Like child’s carefree chatter 

As they slip their hand into ours 

The faithful adorning 

Of beautiful morning 

As night’s bud bursts forth in fresh flowers 

Let’s be boldly honest 

Because of the Promise 

-es God made, trustworthy and true 

Time’s delicate suture 

That holds back the future 

Throbs with what God said He will do 

So ours is to listen 

Where frosted fields glisten, 

Where orbit of season-tide tolls 

To usher the plunder 

That gushes with wonder 

That thunders through awe-smitten souls 

Let’s cherish the summons 

Of what may seem common 

But is mortal’s Magnum Opus 

The season’s first snowman 

The burst of affection 

From hearts still without prejudice 

Let’s savour sweet laughter 

To treasure long after 

Its sparkle of pleasure subsides 

Let’s look if we’re able 

At love’s laden table 

Where Goodness and Mercy abides 

© Janet Martin 

Every so often while snowman was in the works

Little Girl would ask,

Hot chocolate, cookie time?

Finally 'not yet' turned to 'yes!'

making the treat so much sweeter for the waiting!

The faithful adorning 

Of beautiful morning 

As night’s bud bursts forth in fresh flowers 

Numbers 23:19
God is not a man, that He should lie, or a son of man, 

that He should change His mind. Does He speak and not act? 

Does He promise and not fulfill?

Deuteronomy 7:9
Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, 

the faithful God who keeps His covenant of loving devotion 

for a thousand generations of those who love Him 

and keep His commandments.

1 Corinthians 1:9
God, who has called you into fellowship 

with His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.

I Will Trust My Saviour, Jesus

Of Temporal Temples

The Thing to remember

while we are in this world

(but not of) is not only who, but what we are!

We are His temple, bought with a price!

Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, 

who is in you, whom you have received from God? 

You are not your own;

you were bought at a price. 

Therefore honor God with your bodies.

1 Cor.6:19-20

He Will Hold Me Fast

Temporal temple this, tormented though it be 

The enemies of Righteousness cannot thwart ‘Christ in me’ 

The dwelling place of Hope chose frames of skin and bone 

As Faith receives the Holy Spirit; we are not our own 

Then, when the way seems dark and troubled waters roll 

Let His Spirit (whose temple now we are) our hearts console 

The merit of a man is nothing without He 

To Whom each knee will bow when we don immortality 

Holy, holy, the trek from cradle to the grave 

Where Time is but the speck before we meet Mighty to Save 

And temples temporal put on forever evermore 

The Immortality of He whose temple now we are 

© Janet Martin 

2 Cor. 4:16

Therefore we do not lose heart. 

Though outwardly we are wasting away, 

yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.

John 17:20-23

Jesus Prays for All Believers

20 “My prayer is not for them alone.

 I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 

21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. 

May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 

22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 

23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. 

Then the world will know that you sent me 

and have loved them even as you have loved me.

Peek Into Poetic Passion (part two)

 

Peek into Poetic Passion (part two) 

(part one here)

This poem in reply to justified queries; 

How many poems (about August or Autumn) can one write?!

Just like the painter's tray...

Holds pictures to no end...

Just like the Painter’s Tray 

Holds pictures to no end 

The palette of the alphabet 

Is the poet’s best friend 

So many ways to spill 

Quill-colour into art 

Ten-thousand sheets cannot deplete 

The spectrum of the heart 

Thus seasons cannot drain 

Potentiality 

Where all of life is running rife 

With unpenned poetry 

Modern-day pioneers 

And trail-blazers of Time 

The poet’s Must kicks up star-dust 

On stilts of lilt and rhyme 

Thank God, He made no end 

To the extent of ways 

The poet’s heart can unearth art 

From ordinary days 

Thank God, so good and kind

He authors dawn, unscathed

Like a fresh page beneath the wage

Of scribbles, mercy-bathed

 

As long as earth remains 

Seedtime and harvest burst 

Through daybreak’s door with seas that pour 

To unrequited Thirst 

And nothing short of death 

Can quell the poet’s charge 

To softly snare from lofts of air 

Poetry, still at large 

© Janet Martin