Perspective Through the Eyes of Love

Because I Love You   Yiruma

Because I love you

The rains laugh

Touching me softly

With the beauty of belonging

Because I love you

Duty is not mundane

And moments are miracles

Leading to you

Because I love you

Every day is a fresh

And tender tribute

Of  wonder

Because I love you

I can bear

Life's relinquishment

And its rendering

Because I love you

My heart will never be empty

And my joy will ever

Be full

Because I love you

J~

We Are Much the Same

In all of our differences

By culture and creed

We are much the same

Creatures in great need

Of Jesus

In all of our differences

There is but one Name

By which men are saved

We are much the same

Through Jesus

© Janet Martin

      

Heart or Head?

Some days my heart has old ragged edges

Some days its staunch and dull as cold stone

Still, on other days it’s a beckoning blossom

With fringes unfurling in love’s golden sun

Heart, you’re a restless and way-faring drifter

I cannot trust or rely on your lead

Heart, you’re a harbor for feelings and notions

Guess in the end I must follow my head

On some days my head will allow me one day-dream

But on most days it rules with a fist

Void of enchantment or humor or daring

Grim as a woman whose never been kissed

Head, you’re a fine one, with rigid denial

Stopping your ears at the songs of romance

Seems I must hail my heart for a moment

And beg it to teach my head to dance

© Janet Martin

Reason to Be Don Williams

Infinite Incomprehension

He made Himself

Of no reputation

But clothed in flesh

Supreme I AM

Nothing desirable

In his image

Lion of Judah

Became a Lamb

Who can explain

Such humble mercy?

Love unrestrained

Beneath hatred’s blow

Who can explain

Compassion so perfect

As agony wept

Forgive; they do not know

Sweet incomprehension

I cannot grasp it

A King leaves His throne

To die on a cross

So we, wretched men

Like stars in the heavens

May pierce hatred’s darkness

As He shines through us

How I abhor

My rebellious nature

As I consider

Obedient Lord

God; putting on

Man’s filthy stature

Majesty serving

The hand with a sword

Immaculate Offering

Seals our redemption

One Lamb for all

Atonement of sin

To tell of His grace

May I never grow weary

To tell of His love

Where can I begin?

For He made Himself

Of no reputation

Clothing in flesh

Supreme I AM

Nothing desirable

In His image

Love Immortal

Became a Lamb

© Janet Martin

Marriage: It Doesn't Just Happen

 

To all us married folk I say 'cheers,

May love be so blissfully happy

we forget to count the years'

Does this cute cartoon not say it all?...now on a more serious note:

It doesn’t just happen

Love’s bearing; its bending

Is an earnest diligence

Of careful tending

It doesn’t just happen

Love’s time-tender glow

Is not something earned lightly

In life’s ebb and flow

It doesn’t just happen

Love’s sure testament

Is a shining example

Of commitment

It doesn’t just happen

By negligent living

Love is an action

Of giving, forgiving

It doesn’t just happen

Love’s tried and true grace

Is a gentle reflection

Of God’s face

It doesn’t just happen

But oh, its sweet worth

Is surely the most priceless

Beauty on earth

© Janet Martin

From my threshold of middle-age marriage I have a sudden fresher and deeper appreciation for these words;

Happy 49th Anniversary, Mom and Dad

Tomorrow is Mom and Dad’s 49^th Wedding Anniversary. I am so thankful for their shining example of faithfulness.

May God richly bless you with many more.

The Knowns in our Unknowns

The sun rises and then it sets

Upon what was or lies ahead

The hours between; life’s stepping-stones

In our journey of unknowns

With gasps of faith and hope we strain

Against the tides of ill refrain

But there is One who hears each groan

In our journey of unknowns

We cling to Truth eyes cannot see

Yet He consoles our misery

For we will never be alone

In our journey of unknowns

The path of hope is narrow, straight

Leading to Triumph’s gleaming Gate

His arms of mercy, bastions; strong

In our journey of unknowns

Step by faltering step we come

Toward the veil twixt earth and Home

Love’s nail-scarred Victory pleads us on

In our journey to His Known

© Janet Martin

Glynis, love, hugs and prayers.

Simply Moments

Every stunning failure

And each triumphant gasp

Every trembling utterance

In every love we clasp

Every breath of courage

And every tender tear

The cistern filled with laughter

Or the belly filled with fear

The sorrow in our parting

The pleasure in hello

The obligations of sound reason

The reckless joy of letting go

The wine after the harvest

And the toiling and the strife

These are simply moments

But in time they form

A life

© Janet Martin

On This Evening's Eve

On this evening’s eve

The aural scrim descends

In sable folds; it weaves

The moments, gold

To dim, then deeper blends

Purple sweeping shadows

Like painted turrets sprawl

Across the land; the meadow

A stadium where

We watch night’s curtain fall

It tugs in motionless motion

The beauty and brutality

Of this day’s lot; an ocean

Of pure grandeur

Seals its jot in history

Alpha and Omega draws

The shade; it is dark

And day is done

But only day; His love and grace

Go on

And on

And on

And on…

© Janet Martin

I took my daughter and her friend out to a field a few miles from here to watch the sun set. Victoria said that she is going to name that field Sunset Stadium. I LOVE it!:) And all that great open sky, and all that wild wonder and all that awesome creation is a mere 'whisper of Him'  ...a mere speck of His glory and grace! Hallelujah.

The girls wanted the 'best seat in the House'...

The Person I Used to Be

I am not the shape of my body

Or the color of my skin

These are merely landmarks

Of the person I am

Within

Once upon a distant time

I was a girl of many dreams

But somewhere in life’s forward march

They got lost,

It seems

Too many passions folded

Then surrendered to Time’s greed

The future does not give us

What we want, but what we

Need

Sometimes, in perfect moments

As the evening slips away

In gold-vermilion vesture; I become

For blissful half-breaths the girl of

Yesterday

Don’t misunderstand; I’m not ungrateful

But being a woman is bitter-sweet

Girlish freedom is a pasture

Beneath lost day-dreams and

Bare feet

I’ve traded luring day-dreams

For a better mystery

Of motherhood and the adrenaline rush

Of what is yet

To be

© Janet Martin

'Between the girl I once was

And the woman I’ve become

Lie too many

Years'

Doris Day in Don’t Eat the Daisies

Our Writer's Group challenge; Where is the person I used to be?

Stuttered Praise

...and it just kept on shifting; frame after gorgeous frame!




The heavens declare the glory of God;
    the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
    night after night they reveal knowledge
  They have no speech, they use no words;
    no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,     
their words to the ends of the world. Psalms 19:1-4

You receive our humble, heartfelt stammers

In our fumbles you fill in the blanks

Your Holiness embracing murmured thanks

Rising o’er the din of carnal clamors

You whisper to us from the gleaming Gate

As daylight folds beneath heaven’s command

Your glory tints the molten, mystic strand

Spanning the void twixt ‘welcome home’ and ‘wait’

Hatred and fear’s projections cannot mar

The portal where the feet of angels tread

The aftermath of daylight rests its head

Upon the Hand that lights the evening star

We stand upon earth’s shore; as stuttered prayer

Scales the unfathomed reaches of the air

© Janet Martin

The sunset tonight left me speechless with awe…

Any attempts at word; mere stammering ineptness.

All I could whisper was, “Oh God, thank-you, thank-you, thank-you”

The sunset was a sort of an almost circle north-west-south and partial east!..I had NEVER seen anything quite like it!

Lord Most High

We Call it...War

They go away

These dear dads

Leaving behind

Little girls with golden curls

And blue-eyed freckled lads

To fight

Other dear dads

Who leave behind

Little girls with golden curls

And blue-eyed freckled lads

We call it war

© Janet Martin

Tonight we (myself, Matt, Victoria and her friend) watched the movie

The Littlest Rebel (Shirley Temple)

‘But how does that help?’ they ask me as they watch soldiers plunder and kill.

‘Mom, how does killing people make things better?

Mom, how can being so mean bring peace?

Mom, why do we have war?

Mom, is war sin?

In the Arms of a Poem

 (one of my favorite quotes)

From all over God’s earth

from sundry trails

we come; to languish in

the vexing delight

held in the arms of

a poem

nothing quite compares, it seems

no other form of art

can evoke or charm

the seeker who dreams

best in the arms of

a poem

its lure, its lull

its push and pull

are like coming home

to a flickering fireside

in the patient arms of

a poem

© Janet Martin

The Best that We Can Hope For...

Since you must depart

I will let you go

I keep within my heart

Love’s very best, you know

For time can never steal

The pictures that I see

A cherished phantom reel

Of precious memory

Then, when the night wind howls

Spurring the embers glow

When winter’s heaving jowls

Spew blasts of ice and snow

There by the fire’s verve

I’ll re-play tenderly

The moments I preserve

In precious memory

We cannot force the hand

From which life’s moments spill

Soon autumn’s sanguine land

Succumbs to winter’s chill

Soon babies learn to crawl

Soon they are twenty-three

The best that we can hope for

Is a precious memory

© Janet Martin

Summer's Requiem

The acoustics are muted; tinged with musk

Arabesque canticle filling the dusk

Mournful madrigal; a hallowed hymn

This is the hour of summer’s requiem

Soundless, it drips from the edge of the earth

Slipping to vaults of intangible girth

Deeper and deeper its purple-blue shroud

Merges with mantle of midnight’s first cloud

No sheet music forms summer’s drifting dirge

As passionate parting and sorrow converge

Over the meadow and frost-stricken swell

Murmurs a monody; Tender Farewell

Quivering quiet; its swan-song is still

Darkness descends over hollow and hill

Echoes of laughter cajole the dark limb

Tuning the ‘after’ of summer’s requiem  

© Janet Martin

She slipped away early...in a gown befitting the occasion; blue, very deep blue.

Majestic Mystery

We must die

Again, again

To self

It’s hard to explain

but that is love

And each time we die

For Love,

For Him

We become

More alive

Immaculate equilibrium

And each time

we empty ourselves

Gasping and thin

He fills us

Fuller than we’ve ever been

That’s that way it is

With love

The exact opposite of

Normal

And logical

Or practical

The more we give

The more we have

The emptier we become

The fuller we are
Dying so we can truly live;
How can it be?

Oh wonderful, majestic

Mystery

© Janet Martin

A Blissful Madness

The hour is mad with possibility

As summer drools against my window-pane

Strumming the leaf-notes of the maple tree

Its music trickling into life’s mundane

Where duty wields its tried and tireless force

And wander-lust, clad in golden day-dream

Bids me to stray from labor’s staid discourse

To wander by the woodland’s ambling stream

The scent of farewell rushes to me, warm

Like waves to shore before a summer storm

I‘m tethered to the hand pushing the plow

Freedom, a fantastic and foreign ploy

As landscapes burgeon with the after-glow

Of hope and harvest; living’s grief and joy

Dare I to shirk the rod of humble toil

To loiter in the crook of summer’s arm

While others work; will I collect their spoil

Yet languish where her parting kiss is warm?

Temptation urges my heart to rebel

A tug-of war twixt duty and farewell

Oh, tender bliss of love; sweet rivers run

Toward the stream where darker waters move

But shadows only happen in the sun

And grief can only happen if we love

I care not where I spend summer’s last hour

My mouth is full of her wine; bittersweet

For love is a mystic, manifold flow’r

And though I feel her presence wane; retreat

I will embrace the parting tear that flows

Without the thorn we cannot have the rose

© Janet Martin

Autumn's Approach

You are here

Somewhere

Standing on a gate

Slowly closing…

There you wait

Beneath the silver sash

Of dewy lawn

Above the splash 

Of ocher dawn

Within the tawny burnished leaf

And summer's sighing, barren sheaf

You press against reality

In whispers spilling from the tree

And leaning, like a memory

Deep against the heart of me

In mornings I cannot reclaim

Like the echo of a name

Of someone that I used to know

In a summer long ago

I hear you tiptoe through the corn

You will be here

By the morrow's morn...

J~

Imagery

When morning spills a startling chill

From scarlet-satin skies

And we observe a keener verve

Within her restless eyes

When tree-tops blush beneath her brush

Teasing the verdant limb

We recognize the sure demise

Of summer growing dim

But we cannot dissuade or stop

An hour’s velocity

The hand that tugs the bashful bud

Will strip the leafy tree

And those who once dashed unabashed

By life’s rollicking rhyme

Begin to see Mortality

Within each tick of Time

As morning spills a startling chill

On summer’s memory

We recognize within her eyes

More than we plainly see

© Janet Martin

It is downright COLD these past few mornings!

I Want You

…like a baby nuzzling to its mother

And it is enough

Come to me now

Oh, my love

Do not fade away

Into the silver-gray dusk

For I need you

There is no other

Lover

That can warm me

Quite like you

But your waning gaze

Rouses concerns

You are growing distant

Even in your half-grin returns

I sense you

Pulling away

And all I can do is beg you to stay

To lay your head on my shoulder

Just one more hour

Perhaps,

When I am older

I will have the will-power to

Let you go

Already I know

 I will miss you so

Darling,

I will not ask for much

But oh please,

That I may languish ‘neath your touch

A little longer

Only until I am stronger

For I am so much colder

Without your kiss

Upon my shoulder

© Janet Martin

Yes, the sun is

waning a bit…

Suddenly We Remember...

It’s easy to forget

When the afternoon is a golden pool

Of moments unraveling from an azure spool

Into an hour of warm summer-love

As from the pine-spire the woo of a dove

Rides on the argent breeze

And moments become memories

Without a second glance

Because it’s so easy to forget

In the spicy-sweet trance

Of bronze-burnished bloom

How heaven’s lambent broom

Can sweep away

The remnants of a summer day

Without the slightest regard

For the echo of bare feet

Thrumming across the yard

Or the maple tree, weeping scarlet-red tears

Into the portent of silver-crowned years

Then, suddenly we remember
And we feel old

Even before life’s bittersweet
Cold

© Janet Martin

It only dawned on me today that we are three days away from 'officially-fall'! It's so easy to forget when

the afternoon is a golden pool...I'm going back out there.
 

Until We Are Weak

Until we are weak, we cannot be strong

Perfect strength is not reserved for the young

But through One whose promises agelessly speak

We cannot be strong until we are weak

His grace is enough for all mortal despair

Our infirmities never exceed His care

Nothing on this earth over-powers His love

For all mortal despair His grace is enough

The darkness is great, it cannot comprehend

A love that has known no beginning or end

Though the Light shines on it, darkness chooses hate

It cannot comprehend; the darkness is great

Love is so abused; often misunderstood

Thus, we are confused when we hear ‘God is good’

Love appeared weak; He answered not, though accused

Often misunderstood; Love is so abused

Love proved its power as the cross bore His blood

The Lion, a Lamb shedding redemption’s flood

From ancient Calvary to present hour

As the cross bore His blood Love proved its power

Until we are weak, what we cannot truly know

Is His perfected strength; He has promised it so

God, give us courage then, to surrender and seek

What we cannot truly know until we are weak

© Janet Martin

 Poetic Bloomings invites us to attempt a Swap Quatrain

The Swap Quatrain was created by Lorraine M. Kanter.

Within the Swap Quatrain each stanza in the poem must be a quatrain (four lines) where the first line is reversed in the fourth line. In addition, line 2 must rhyme with line 1, and line 3 must rhyme with line 4 and so on, BUT not repeat the same rhyming pattern on subsequent stanzas.

Rhyming pattern: AABB, CCDD, and so on.

Her Departure

(oops, I need to change the time on my camera ! no, I did not see tomorrow's sunset today:)

Beyond the trees she fell

A flaming crimson orb

Into the mystic swell

Of history's never-more

No farewell did she speak

But simply flung her shroud

Against the higher peak

And to the lower cloud

We watch in quiet awe

Her riveting descent

As night-shades softly draw

Across earth’s humble tent

© Janet Martin