Of Home-makers, Mamas and Glory-days

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We do not tip the glamor Richter-scale

Of fashion, fortune or front-page applause

Yet we embrace, like heaven’s Holy Grail

Each humble task of love’s domestic cause

There are no halls of fame or monuments

To honor dish-soap hands of mama-smiles

No recognition for the hours spent

Of washed and folded, scrubbed and polished miles

We do not labor for crass platitude

Or trophies to acknowledge our pain

But oh, the childish grin of gratitude

Endears to us what some view as mundane

There are no banners waving in the air

For she who, for the thousandth time has served

Supper at six and no one really cares

Yet she toils not for recompense deserved

She toils to see her happy children smile

To nurture tenderly her patch of sod

Not for the wealth of fortune’s fleeting guile

But to make home a little glimpse of God

© Janet Martin

The inspiration for this poem; 

Both of my daughters work at Long-term care facilities. Yesterday while exchanging stories, they agreed it is so touching to see some of the ladies with dementia rocking and patting dolls or folding and re-folding tea-towels or aprons; re-living their glory-days…

We watched the movie The Help yesterday.Wow! That's all I will say.

On the week-end one of my daughters commented on how I seem so happy and content just doing laundry and stuff...ah, if she only knew:) and I pray someday she may, Lord-willing:) It's not the laundry, the dishes, the cleaning, the 'stuff'; it's the LOVE!

The other evening after supper had been over  for a while suddenly 'sonny' mentions while passing through the kitchen, 'oh, by the way mom, thanks for supper. It was really good'.'

I dedicate this song to all mamas and daddies.

Vexation-proof

Sometimes a vast, vexatious void

Torments the foibles of our thought

Not with life’s precious proofs of joy

But with the tears of what is not

The vaunt of what is not can drain

The laughter from life’s cup we hold

And what we have we hold in vain

If we ignore its splash of gold

For what is not may never be

And what fills our cup today

Does not come with a guarantee

That it will never slip away

So, when that vast, vexatious vaunt

Threatens to drive us to despair

We ought to fold its tortured taunt

Between our fingers in a prayer

© Janet Martin

Yesterday, was Family Day in Ontario. A provincial holiday for families to focus on spending time together. We had a great day, minus 'daddy' who needed to leave so he could be back for plans next week-end. I needed to keep re-filling my 'cup' with reminders of what we have, and not what is not...folding the rest between my fingers.

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Of Moment-tears

Oh, I am not impatient now

To see the snow slip from the trees

For soon time’s fixed, tenacious flow

Will claim it to my memories

And I no longer beg the hour

To leap into fair middle-June

For I have seen its virgin-flower

Garnish the sweep of autumn’s swoon

And I have heard the echo of

A balled writ of things I love

In sanguine swell a tender tune

Tinctures the knell of harvest-moon

And I no longer fret the day

Or love’s moment-metered pretext

For who am I to dare to say

‘Tis worse or better than the next

For like the snowflake decks the ground

In myriads of gathered gasp

They melt away without a sound

Sand-sparkles slipping through our grasp

Leaving no timeless, tangent proof

And soon the hour that stood aloof

Descends; joy precedent to grief

Winter, the bud of spring’s relief

No, I no longer cling or clutch

To hour-rendered offerings

But treasure, while they grace my touch

Life’s trial-and-triumph sufferings

For who can tell what waits beyond

Raw gale or golden-gilded sweep?

The lily drifting on the pond

Does not divulge its murky deep

And we cannot expunge the wrought

Nor form the future in our thought

But it is ours to smile or weep

Time’s moment-tears we cannot keep

© Janet Martin

'I'm sick of this weather', said Matt, as he trudged out to wait for the bus this morning (the cold more bitter because his sister's bus was cancelled due to the rain-snow duet:) I don't care for this weather either but I no longer desire to rush moments; transparent tick-tocks ever nudging the fledgling nearer to the edge of the nest...

Unrivaled Beauty

I know nothing

Of those things they write

Of Boston or Venice

Or Paris in spring

But oh, I have known

The same sky-night

Warm to a mid-summer

Dew-dawning

And I’ve known the same sun

Spill its gold

Into the hollow

Of last remnant snow

Or danced with the zephyr

That tosses the sea

Rich with the pigment

Of eve’s garnet glow

And I’ve known the same thrill

Of wonder-drenched hurt

As those who have traveled

Earth’s most-lauded shores

Extolling grand visions

Of turquoise-green surf

Of white sandy beach

And reef-studded sea-floors

For I’ve seen the smile

Of a little porch light

Reaching to me

Through dusk’s blue-shadow dome

And I’ve borne the rush

Of joy’s perfect delight

In the unrivaled beauty

Of coming home

© Janet Martin

I'm also discovering it's kindred beauty...two gold circles through blowing snow as I watch at the window
for loved ones to come home.

Of Life's Impetuous Rush

The waning edge of daylight’s dwindling sigh

Dissolves as blue on deeper blue descends

Until tangent and intangible blends

The hues that draw the line twixt earth and sky

Where we are held in Time’s delicate glance

A little while, to taste life’s wander-lust

Poured in a glass; the bitter-sweet romance

Of vintage dream’s before they turn to dust

And aspirations of our untried youth

Like cull of hull have borne the fruit of truth

The inevitable begins to yield

What our resistance cannot keep at bay

For who can brush the dusk from yonder field

Or pluck from it the rendering of a day

Or who can quell the echo of a sigh

As love employs its impetuous rush

Against the darkness of the midnight sky

Vexing the onyx void of star-frothed hush

Where ebb and flow of retrospect endears

The whisper of its memory in our ears

On yonder brink the morn of morrow waits

The oracle of hope and mystery

But none succeeds the hour to pry its gates

Or knows the formula of what it will be

We have only this moment on our tongue

To taste its offerings of salt and blood

Before too soon we are no longer young

Touching the footprints where our fathers stood

And murmuring as those who’ve gone before

How swift this little life-time is no more

© Janet Martin

Today someone mentioned how at a certain point in life suddenly it hits you that no matter how old we get, life is short and passes quickly...something we cannot grasp when we are young. This afternoon I convinced those who were home to come on a walk with me and when they asked 'why?' I told them to spend time together and to make a memory, because after all is said and done, memories are the only thing we can keep. This poem is a sort of collection of those thoughts.

Of Morning Mercy-streams

He rends the veil of night with mercy-beams

We gaze in awe at heaven’s kiss imbued

From yonder darkened portal where love streams

From mystic deep in Morning-magnitude

Across the earth His tender grace imparts

The promise of compassion’s faithfulness

As He inspires weary, fainting hearts

Beneath the glory of dawn’s gleaming tress

As surely as the little bird is fed

As surely as the flower fills the seed

He cares for us; He is our living Bread

His touch sustaining our utter need

He rends the veil of night with mercy-beams

From yonder darkened portal His love streams

© Janet Martin
 
1 Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness. 2 Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King. 3 God is known in her palaces for a refuge. 4 For, lo, the kings were assembled , they passed by together. 5 They saw it, and so they marveled ; they were troubled , and hasted away . 6 Fear took hold upon them there, and pain, as of a woman in travail . 7 Thou breakest the ships of Tarshish with an east wind. 8 As we have heard , so have we seen in the city of the LORD of hosts, in the city of our God: God will establish it for ever. Selah. 9 We have thought of thy lovingkindness, O God, in the midst of thy temple. 10 According to thy name, O God, so is thy praise unto the ends of the earth: thy right hand is full of righteousness. 11 Let mount Zion rejoice , let the daughters of Judah be glad , because of thy judgments. 12 Walk about Zion, and go round about her: tell the towers thereof. 13 Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces; that ye may tell it to the generation following. 14 For this God is our God for ever and ever: he will be our guide even unto death. Ps. 48.

Intangible Touch

I have been kissed

Not of lips

I have been touched

Not of skin

And I have felt those finger-tips

Ravage, caress

A world within

***

The utterance of wordless thought
Traverses eons obscurely
Yet keens the pen, jot upon jot
Touching the page in poetry

***

To quell the trembling of its touch
Would be to still the surging sea
Or quench the intangible rush
Rousing the want of life in me

***

Yes, I have been kissed
Not of lips
And I have been touched
Not of skin
The climax of a moment
Spills in heart-beats
Whisper-thin
 

J~

Unquenchable Fulfillment

 

How well the thought of you fits into me

To afflict and caress; love’s sweet alloy

For though it bears all things, its harmony

Is surely the climax of grief and joy

The superficial want of kings and things

The dissonance of mortal have-and-hold

Swarms, ravaging the barracks deep within

Yet cannot dismantle love’s tender hold

Its equilibrium, a mystery

Though fiends may howl and daring tempests scream

They cannot wrench the thought of you from me

Or mute the melody of love’s requiem

For oh, how perfectly the thought of you

Melts into every space that want would drench

If not for pigments of unfathomed blue

Sweeping a shore that oceans cannot quench

  

J~

The ABC's of Life

If we have taught them how to be

Astronauts or

Bridge-builders or

Composers or

Doctors or

Engineers or

Farmers or

Governors or

Home-makers or

Intellects or

Judges or

Kings or

Landscapers or

Mothers or

Nurses or

Optometrists or

Presidents or

Queens or

Receptionists or

Scientists or

Teachers or

Undertakers or

Veterinarians or

Writers or

X-ray technicians or

Yoga instructors or

Zoo-keepers

…without first teaching the love of God

We have failed.

© Janet Martin

The devotion I read this morning reminded us how important it is that we, as parents reflect the love of God.

Mr. February

Though you may stand

Inches beneath

Your limber peers

You startle placid

Bystanders

With bully howls and jeers

And while you tug

The daylight hour

Into the twilight blue

We slip and slide

And huff and puff

Against your cheerless hue

And though you boast

The day of hearts

And chocolate-flavored bliss

We do not fall

In love with your

Icy, obnoxious kiss

For what you lack in size

Or flair

You pack in blustered punch

While we peer

Through ice-lace fretwork

And pour hot soup for lunch

© Janet Martin

What is It?

What is this awesome thing I see

Breaking through yonder scrim?

Gleaming with opportunity

A wondrous, wordless hymn

What is this tender gift of grace

Bestowed in spite of we

Who often thoughtlessly embrace

Its virgin purity?

Oh pray, what is this glorious gift

Pushing dark folds away

In mercy-streams; oh what is it?

Why, it is a new day

© Janet Martin

It is wrapped in blue-gray today! Land and sky...

Love ABC's (a re-post)

 

What if, instead of

Assuming and

Begrudging and

Criticizing and

Doubting and

Envying and

Fault-finding and

Gossiping and

Hating and

Insulting and

Judging and

Knocking and

Lusting and

Meddling and

Nagging and

Obsessing and

Pointing and

Quarreling and

Ranting and

Slighting and

Tearing down and

Unpleasantness and

Violence and

War and

X-cessivness and

Yelling and

Zero-patience…

…we just loved?

© Janet Martin


We Should Only Have Time to Love

Where the Rubber Meets the Road

 

They don't complain

Supper on red

Enjoyed

Chocolate relished

thoroughly

As they discussed life

and everything we've never done

They didn't see my heart

Lying on the table

There is an ocean secured

by dikes of flesh and prayer

Because only God knows

the truth

of quiet sorrows

that we bear

While love works so very hard

to put our food on the table

And we all know

Love

does the best

it is able 

...half-way across the country

eighteen wheels and love

turn toward 'trying to be home

by noon'

on Saturday

Janet Martin

I like this song because I can relate to these words so well.

'it's not fancy but it works'

Matt got a huge chuckle out of 'granola hearts'. He knows his mom is an oatmeal junkie:) ...and he beat me to 'I love you' when he saw the chocolate suckers, knowing it would 'win' him one...it did.

I Love You Too

(my own version of Tom's song:)

I love

Little girls in spring

Burnished brooks that sing

Laughter of rain

And grain

I love

Weather-dappled glass

Carpets made of grass

Cloud-ships overhead

And bread

And I love you too

I love

Coffee-flavored dawns

Children-trampled lawns

Daddy’s stubble-chin

And grins

I love

Teen-agers that blush

Midnight’s velvet hush

Weathered rocking-chairs

And pears

And I love you too

I love

Off-to-school-day-hugs

Butter-flies and bugs

The joy of dinner-time

And rhymes

I love

Sunsets, little boys

Quiet after noise

Autumn-painted trees

And cheese

And I love you too

I love

Sunday morning calm

Snowflakes on my palm

Whispers soft as silk

And milk

I love

God’s amazing grace

Sea-breeze on my face

Bicycles and blooms

And brooms

And I love you too

© Janet Martin

…and I love that one could write a hundred verses to this song.

No Greater Love

There is no greater love

Than love of Thee, oh God

You crown us with your mercy

Where our sin-stains deck the sod

And instead of destruction

As long as we shall live

You offer sweet redemption

Oh my God and you forgive

There is no greater love

For you do not reward

According to the death we earned

But you forgive us, Lord

As far as east from west

Or north is from the south

You wash away unrighteousness

And satisfy our mouth

The sweetness of your love

Is not a transient thing

Mortality soon slips away

Like petals on the wind

But because of Your grace

And everlasting love

You transport us from this dark place

To ageless realms above

There is no greater love

You laid Your own life down

So we may not know death

But wear the victor’s crown

Oh, what a love is this?

Your death so we may live

Your righteousness absolving guilt

Oh God, as You forgive

© Janet Martin

Inspired by Ps. 103 and this…The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Rom. 6:23

 Celebrating LOVE today!

Happy Valentine's Day

I must go now

To melt chocolate

And laugh

Happy Valentine’s Day!

May chocolate and laughter kiss you today.

Love~ Janet

Poems too Perfect for Air (an edited re-post)

I pen your whispers on a page

Where only thought can see

The master-piece arrangements

Of love’s perfect poetry

I seal your secret sentiments

Within my tender tear

In scripts of un-spelled poetry

Where only thought can hear

I share your silent sorrow-tugs

  A slow-motion appeal  

In tidal-waves of poetry

Where only thought can feel

I wrap your sigh around me
 A whispered after-glow
Of poetry and passion
Where only thought can know

J~

Ineptness of Ink

To spell the ways of love evades my pen

Disrober of the heart and soul and mind

And I would blush but love is gentle, kind

Forgiving foibles common unto men

And yet to spell its ways evades my pen

Softly you come to me and I love you

As you remove the ramparts to my soul

Geography of skin is not the whole

But oh, beneath your kiss its touch will do

Softly you come to me and I love you

The ways of love are life’s great mystery

We cannot suffer its caress alone

For love cannot exist in only one

Divine extolling of insanity

The ways of love are life’s great mystery

To tell the ways of love evades my quill

How does one spell the lining of a heart?

Or shape in word our utter-deepest part

Shattering eons when the night is still

To tell love’s ways evades my humble quill

© Janet Martin

Of Mending and Tending

 

Her hands were rough

With the toil of love

Of tending, mending

Home and heart

His body was lean

Raising a large family

Drained more than

Pockets and bank accounts

…as we thrived

Never knowing need at all

Not because of things

But because of love

© Janet Martin

True love teaches in its tending

For there will always be fences,
clothes and hearts

In need of mending

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Of Pondering and Pinnacles...a Love Sonnet

 

Soundless, night sweeps its sable sea across

Blue winter dusk, and the world disappears

Beneath its wave; this day of toil and dross

Slips to the ocean of life’s rendered years

I strain to grasp its cadence on the breeze

Years taste like salt; their tears stinging my cheek

Or, is it the caress of memories

Telling those tender thoughts I cannot speak

Of love and longing, where its swan-song falls

In rippled echoes from the vaulted deep

Tripping through retrospect’s unguarded halls

Like vagabonds with no desire to sleep

They beckon and I yield to the romance

Of blue-bell burnished zephyrs and we dance

The night is warm; beneath its purple mist

The surging swell of ticking clocks subsides

There are no moments; time does not exist

Where we retrace the echo of its tides

I feel your whisper, soft against my face

The melody of moonlight gently spills

Against the shadow of thought’s keen embrace

Somewhere a dam breaks, disregarding wills

And while the lab’rer rests and dreamers dream

While winter prowls and howls outside their doors

We sail the crest of wild, uncharted streams

Marauders swept onto deserted shores

And on the banks of time’s unfettered bliss

Here we recall and touch those things we miss

Love does not fall away like tears and years

Or petals from the polestar of the rose

Its does not drift to nameless atmospheres

Dissolving in the breadth of moment-flows

We contemplate but cannot quantify

Its measurements of rhapsody and grief

Of passion-surges curtailing the sky

Or pain in swift, staggering disbelief

The dance of retrospect does not impart

One half without the other, smile and tear

Composes love-songs cradled in the heart

In canticles that only thought can hear

I hold you close but oh, I’ve come to know

Love’s pinnacle is in the letting go

© Janet Martin

Happy Valentine's Day
May it be love-ly in every way OXOX

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Love Out-poured (an edited re-post)

 

He could have sent a prophet
A servant, meek and low
To bear the curse of evil
And hatred's cruel blow
He could have sent a king of earth
A pauper or a priest
He had the means to place His worth
Within a mindless beast
He could have sent His angels
Legions to fill the sky
To spare Himself the anguish
Of watching His Son die
He could have, with one uttered word
Declared all man forgiven
He could have, from His visage stirred
The rocks to shout salvation
But He chose to put on flesh
The Sacred Son of Heaven
Became a servant unto men
In form, lowly and human
Upon a cross He gave Himself
A King and Royal Priest
And not one drop of love withheld
As death’s curse was released
He could have sent an army
To face the fiends of hell
But He loved us so completely
That He sent Himself

Janet

Inspired by Isa. 53 and Phil. 2: 5-11

~The more we love others, the more of ourselves we give.
~Love is fulfilled in its out-pouring.
~Love speaks in a clear voice
not by words, but by choice.

Pictures...

Pictures; they just sit and stare
And they never say a word
Frozen in an image where
Hearts and memories are stirred

I pause to wipe a tender tear

Oh, it’s almost like you’re here

The night wind moans, a melody
Where arabesque thought-whispers fall
I can feel you here with me
It’s like you never left at all
I reach to touch your smiling face
No one will ever take your place

Pictures, they just sit and stare
Silver-soft echoes from the past
It's almost  more than I can bear

Yet, still I reach to hold you fast
For there are no words left to speak
My tear falls on your paper cheek

Janet~

Symbols of Love (an edited re-post)

We choose red wine, sweet chocolate, a rose
Candle-light dinner, soft music, nice clothes
We choose things of comfort, delightful and new
 In our best efforts to say, ‘I love you’

He chose a crown made of thorns, not the rose
Some nails and a cross are the symbols He chose

Clad in His blood, pierced, suffering, He cried
“Father, forgive them,” then... He died

Janet~

In Loving Hands

 

Poetic Bloomings invites us to attempt the Ovillajo form

Beyond my faith or fear-filled eyes

The unknown lies

Its moments shaped like precious sands   

In loving hands

Before they are released, the staff and rod

Of Father God

To test and try our grasp of dust

To teach us how to hope and trust

In One who holds our moments first

The unknown lies in loving hands of Father God

© Janet Martin

Holding Up Hands

 

We gather to lift them

To Jehovah God today

Strengthen the feeble hands, oh Lord
And steady the knees that give way

As Aaron and Hur held Moses

Until the battle had been won

We hold them in our pleading words

Crying ‘Thy will be done’

© Janet Martin

For J&R.

Of Love's Kind Learning and Kaleidescopes

 

Oh my love, it seems we cannot

Return to starry-eyed youth

Or exchange for bliss of ignorance

Wisdom’s un-embellished truth

Oh my love, now we are older

And the thing that we have learned

Is merely this; quadrille of nature’s

Seasons past can’t be returned

And the moment we are holding

Even now slips to Time’s crypt

As we hear our voices pondering

When and how these decades slipped

Oh my love, we journey forward

What is past is nothing now

But the shards of love's kind learning

Etched into its afterglow

…where scattered tumbles, triumphs, stumbles

Pattern; a kaleidoscope

Within our thought, its gilded shadows

Images of hurt and hope

Oh my love, humbly we gather

From the chaff strewn at our feet

The pearl of wisdom we have garnered

In love’s learning; bitter-sweet

© Janet Martin

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