To You and The Art That Waits Within...or, Holy Joy

From the book A Million Little Ways by emily p. freeman 

Beautiful you,

Born, not to do

What he or she has done

But what still waits

Beneath the gates

Of thought and skin and bone

The canvas of

Life’s live-laugh-love

Unfolds…inhale, exhale

Where poetry

Is like a sea

Out-poured from mortal grail

Our tools of trade

Are ready made 

To meld with the employ

Of fingertips,

Eyes, ears and lips

Ah, this is holy joy

…to pour in art

The human heart

With worship unrestrained

And thus to be

The you or me

That loving God ordained

© Janet Martin

Declaration of God's Glory...

How like a God of glory to remind us who He is
Upon a canvas none can reach to touch and thus defile...

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
 Ps.19:1

 

The colors of the sky hung o’er the holy march of hours

Appeases, teases restless eyes; we gaze awestruck at art

Of day-to-day and night-to-night like a garden of flow’rs

Rousing with age-old splendor renewed wonder to the heart

If threaded bit by bit upon a string its shades would stun

The master jewelers of this world, for who can snare in stone

Saffron, chartreuse, slate, blush rose or garnet and gold of dawn

The ebony of midnight and the sapphire of high noon

God tips the grail of mist-kissed veil, of pewter raindrop jars

Beneath the heath of heaven we fumble with day-to-days

While night-to-night we marvel at a meadowland of stars

After the wester sky soft-dies and tenders twilight’s blaze

How like a God of glory to remind us who He is

Upon a canvas none can reach to touch and thus defile

But as a Grandly symbol of His boundless tenderness

He spills the colors of his love into a sky-wide smile

© Janet Martin

December's Day

Hard, hard, beneath our feet silk-soft the lofty season slips

It strips the lushness from the land like laughter from its lips

The swelling harvest disappears; December’s day is stark

Where echoes waft like silver snowflakes strumming early dark

The boulevard is brushed with brittle scuttle-song of leaf

The pasture-land is hushed; its little bloom in gathered sheaf

And thought is like a room that tries to hold what it cannot

December’s day the skin and bone of time’s tittle and jot

How hardly we have held the Thing that melts within our clutch

How deftly day and night can wean beneath our very touch

A lifetime; always giving us what we can never keep

December’s day like a mother singing her child to sleep

Still, still the skylines blush, the rush of tick and tock deploys

Another round of push and pull to vex life’s grievous joys

Where holding on is always the prelude to letting go

Each climax fades; December’s day a passive afterglow

© Janet Martin

On Finding Christmas Joy

'how impossible' I ponder as I bake and decorate, 'joy would be, but for love first!'

Oh, hunt in vain, dear one, in vain

Joy is not a shopping cart

Its happiness is not for sale

We can’t purchase ‘peace of heart’

It won’t melt on tongues like sugar

Or festive-shaped shortbread cheer

Joy is not in Christmas carols

Touted, shouted once a year

Ring those bells and wrap a present

String those merry lights above

You will never be a peasant

If you have a heart of love

Love alone is joy’s inception

All the trimmings make us glad

If we first find satisfaction

In the Love, like Jesus had

So, let hearts be like a manger

A cradle for heaven’s boy

Then, and only then forever

Will we find true Christmas joy

© Janet Martin

Because We All Need That

We should be to others

What we wish them to be

A hug, a hand of helpfulness

Compassion, sympathy,

A shoulder to lean on

An ‘I prayed for you’ smile

A kind word of encouragement,

A ‘walk the second mile’

We should be to others

A ‘you can do it’ pat

A patient, listening fellow-friend

Because we all need that

© Janet Martin

What we wish others would do for us

We should make certain we are doing for them