Where Plain Duty Lies

 Dawn excites the morning skies where a world of Duty lies, Pray, before its memories drift, oh, we do not waste this gift!

Sometimes, where my plain Duty lay

I turned my head the other way

And whispered words with pretty eyes

Believing my self-wrought disguise

Declining love’s soul-surgery

Of patient humility

…but I could never bar the guilt

That mocked me beneath night’s quilt

Or pretend away truth’s stealth

Unable to fool myself

For the key to happy living

Lies not in getting, but giving

Somewhere mercy’s benefactor

Quiets accusation’s actor

Though, like Peter I denied

Love’s plain Duty, grace replied

Replenishing life’s sin-stained awning

With a gift of faultless dawning

Today, where my plain Duty lies

Pray I do not close my eyes

Nor seek to absolve its tug

With some fantasy I hug

Lord, this day help me to prove

The meek mission of true love

© Janet Martin

 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. 1 Cor.3:13

Vapor-regale...

This day gently tethered by Duty and dream

Dissipates; with it its marvel and muse

No second chance to replenish its dues

Ethereal frigate on Time’s vapor stream

Filling the night with farewells’ fond requiem

Once upon childhood we thought not of years

For Time was a gondola drifting at ease

And we were quite eager for wide open seas

Oblivious to how soon Time disappears

Caught on its ripple of laughter and tears

Silver-mist schooner, soft swiftly you sail

Bound for a shoreline where Time will abort

And all we know is God waits at its port

Where now we lean to peer over the rail

Grasping at droplets of vapor-regale

© Janet Martin

It's late but I wanted to post a little something to try out our new computer after the old one died, suddenly; now we are up and running again.

Hope you all had a happy Saturday.

Poised on the Brink of a Poem

Poised on the brink of a poem, my love

Somehow your touch on my thought

Stirs me to reach past the ache of farewell

Back to a place memory-wrought

What is the color of loneliness, love

Is it the shade of a breeze

Rising and falling, a phantom baton

Strumming the night-ridden seas

Is it the whisper of what-once-had-been

Rousing both wonder and want

Tipping a scale bent with laughter and grief

Painting thought’s walls with its taunt

How is it that ink curlicues can compose

Harmonies sweet and surreal

Cupping the echo of living’s adieus

Where only thought-touch can feel

Masterpiece moments re-shaped into word

Never do justice and yet

Somehow a memory secured in a poem

Helps me to never forget

Someday I'll take the piece still in my clasp

Though now the music of home

Seems quite ordinary, I know I exist

Poised on the brink of a poem

© Janet Martin

No Weather in Heaven

We thank Thee Lord that there is no weather in Heaven

No dark sky, no morning sun

but only forever the Lord God's full glory

on and on and on...

Today the rain falls, the sun rises

and everyone suffers, enjoys equally

the same weather, but in Heaven

only the believer will be

In Heaven seasons will flee away

...no need for rain, no drought or storm

To test the faith, faith will be sight

And sight forever Christ the Lord

Janet~

I was ready to hang out a long line of laundry when the sun disappeared behind low, dull sky and now it looks like it might rain...again.

You Love Us Still

How oft we scorn Thy nail-scarred Hand

Because we do not understand

Thy faultless thought or perfect will

Yet, oh, my Lord, You love us still

You lay before our thankless eyes

Thy glory, glimpsed in waking skies

Over the earth Thy mercies spill

For, oh my Lord, You love us still

Did ever such a love before

To hearts of everyone implore?

Your grace forgives sin’s vilest ill

Because oh Lord, you love us still

While we showcase pathetic boast

Claiming Thy throne to raise a toast

Mindless from whence life’s blessings spill

You see, yet choose to love us still

Oh, patient Father, Keeper, Friend

How oft you hear our lips pretend

While you behold the heart; evil

Yet, oh my Lord, you love us still

Then, stir in us a purer want

Greater than human nature’s taunt

So that we may Thy call fulfill

Remembering You love us still

 ...and should we gaze where footsteps slip

Return us to Thy fellowship

Pouring in us hope's glad refill

For oh my Lord, You love us still

© Janet Martin

Of Swatch of Sod and Sweep of Sky

We splash across earth’s waking green

Past-present-future caught between

A swatch of sod and sweep of sky

Its palette pleasant to the eye

In constant marvel, life and death

Are juxtaposed in every breath

And soon where blooming bud was lent

The limb is gnarled and heavy-bent

Time’s draught of moments takes its toll

Where we are all piece of a whole

Greater than thought or touch and taste

Ere dust to dust retrieves its waste

Freedom; life’s greatest blessedness

Nor for greed’s wanton lawlessness

But as we grasp its worth we see

A sacred, elemental key

…Responsibility and Rule

Not for the faint of heart or fool

We yearn with clear and earnest eyes

To satisfy Time’s moment-prize

With more than dust of darling dreams

Or wanderlust-betaken schemes

For surely life is more than breath

To lead us to eternal death

We splash across earth’s waking green

Toward a Line, sure yet Unseen

Of tick-tock trampling underfoot

The miles transporting us to It

Time’s sweep of sky and swatch of sod

Life’s little highway back to God

© Janet Martin

I am reading through Peter Marshall’s sermons, dumbfounded by their simplicity and depth and timeless relevance…It is little wonder that the loss of his voice and verve were deeply mourned. Here, a small excerpt...

Then, When We Sleep to Wake...

Then, when we sleep to wake and when we wake never to sleep

When the Unknown is gone and no more tears remain to weep

Then we shall understand that which we sought to know before

As Time yields to the Absolute of God’s forevermore

Then, when Hope is exchanged for Home and Home is hope fulfilled

When we have heard that final ‘Come’ as Death’s dark sea is stilled

Then, when the Mystery of soul and spirit are revealed

How worth it all is every grief as every grief is healed

Then, when at last faith becomes sight, sight absolves mortal strife

As death becomes a stepping-stone to everlasting life

And Time’s defenseless shadow fades into Love’s dauntless deep

Then, when we sleep to wake and when we wake never to sleep

© Janet Martin

Because, at the end of it all Reality abides; the sole/soul reason for conception, birth, death to life. We should live every day and seek to remember to never forget...Time is perishable and then we must all put on the Imperishable...

Ah, Thee Who Sends The Rain...

 I'm certain we would all be choosing no rain right now but even as I write this thunder rolls across the deep

and we trust the Lord our way to keep...(yes, the farmers and gardeners and everybody! yes, those in the drought-stricken southwest too)

Ah, Thee who sends the rain

And lowers twilight’s veil

Then at the dawn draws it again

We know Thou wilt not fail

Ah, Thee who tends the air

And sees each private grief

Surely you hear our wordless prayer

When vexed by unbelief

Ah, Thee who discerns thought

And intent of the heart

Still, still you thrill earth’s season-rill

With Thy majestic art

And though Thou knowest we

Fear suffering over sin

Still we arouse Thy sympathy

And Mercy’s beckoning

Ah, Thee who holds the thread

Where flesh and soul divide

Instill faith greater than death’s dread

As Hope is satisfied

© Janet Martin

Contemplating Happiness

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I cannot keep you happy for long

Nor you me

Love, is more than have and hold

This disappoints, you see

For happiness must be three-fold

First God, then you and I

Else we are merely capable

Of expectation’s lie

Darling, how long we live is trite

But we should ask, ‘how well?’

Time’s kaleidoscope of morn to night

Tolls a most awesome bell

We cannot hear but somewhere

Parting lurks, oh may it be

That where two separate at last

Never, oh, never three

Time’s eons throb with love’s allowance

Of laughter and tears

Seasons sob with the advancing

To where Time disappears

Happiness in all its glory

Taunts our wants and woes

Until Heaven fulfills glimpses

Earth's three-fold love bestows

© Janet Martin

Just Like An Afternoon

   

She told me she would read while we walked to make time pass quickly...and the way home seem shorter...

 ...she didn't know that if  I could I would hold on with both hands and dig my feet in to slow down the afternoon and stretch out the miles but its no use; in the tug-of-war with Time, Time always wins! Next year Victoria will be gone with the youth group on Victoria Day weekend, so we wanted to make it a special Mom and Victoria 'last time'. We did:)

Time takes no holiday

How soon an afternoon

Slips into gowns of evening gray

Like May slips into June

The banter of an hour

Distracts us from the truth

Its laughter like a new-born flower

Or prettiness of youth

The purple hyacinth

Blooms wild on yonder slope

Where we explored spring’s labyrinth

Windswept and drenched with hope

Where, but for poetry

No wisp of it remains

Perfection but a fantasy

Of thought-echoed refrains

…where once three girls dashed free

On childhood’s lilac-breeze

Before they disappeared, where dreams

Beckon new memories

Just like an afternoon

Sun-kissed in middle-May

Always the evening comes too soon

And hurries it away

© Janet Martin

Bards of May

How merrily the bards of May

Spill sweetness to earth’s calloused gray

Now shouts the rising sun to earth

Of longing quelled, of glad re-birth

And hearts, mantled with bleak despair

Embrace May-song like answered prayer

How graciously the bards of May

Ease somber filament away

Oh, bonny bliss of green and blue

Of purple kiss and golden hue

We gaze with beggarly delight

On orchard haze of pink and white

How free and fair season’s bequeath

This thing of air; we lie beneath

The lacy arch of wreath-plumed bark

Where noon sprawls high, its gilded arc

A pleasant, poetic disguise

Where Time slips past our half-closed eyes

…as merrily the bards of May

Tease trees and meadow-lands to play

The tune we crave in winter’s grief

Of sighing grass and lilting leaf

Where soon mid-May reality

Is naught but bits of poetry

© Janet Martin