What is the loveliness

You keep on your lips?

What scenes lay behind your closed eyes?

What do you ache for

In clenched finger-tips

What tunes your unspoken cries?

What draws your laughter?

What stirs your soul?

What weeps from inclines above?

Beyond the longing

That curses this world

Oh, do you think it is love?

***

What causes Him

To grant one more day

To a thankless and erring race?

What shapes His patience

Toward rebel-slaves

Addicted to sin’s vile disgrace

What tunes the mercy

That wakens the dawn?

What stirs His might from above?

What fills the vastness

Of centuries gone?

Oh, do you think it is love?

But You Stayed...

…but you stayed

All soft and warm against me

In the promises we made

While Time and distance

Spread their ware

you stayed

against me in a prayer

J~

Beneath Winter's Flaxen Moon

We walk the frost-tipped eventide

On aisles of snow-bent grass

And crooked trees stretch shameless; wide

Their naked wantonness

The low moon falls against the lawn

Where frozen puddles lie

As twilight deepens its blue yawn

Inhaling remnant sky

It fans its thoughts on deadened air

And bends the earth into a prayer

Your breath is summer on my skin

Your fingertips, a hearth

Your lips, shaped in a soft half-grin

Bring heaven-thoughts to earth

The disrobed trees in clumsy truth

Our hidden wants descry

You take my longing in your mouth

And peel away the sky

The moon its subtle vesture spills

In silver blankets on the hills

The wind, a drifting troubadour

Croons a slow melody

It sweeps across night’s gleaming floor

In gallant chivalry

The little breadth of toil and tears

That stole away the noon

Dissolves like hazy yester-years

Beneath the flaxen moon

But we are not aware of things

As beggars taste the wine of kings

J~

Sun-down...

All day it hung
A polished orb
In heights of azure mirth
Til swiftly
and so silently
it fell beneath the earth
A fire-ball
of burnished orange
yet without much ado
it simply slipped
behind the woods
soundlessly out of view
All that it forgot to take
was a pink and purple lake...

Janet~

I intentionally waited to go for my run until sun-down.
I'm glad I did. The sun fell away in minutes
leaving a pink and gold wash in the atmosphere
before the blue twilight stole it away.

Best Day Ever

Let’s live our best day ever

It’s the only one we’ve got

Let’s give it back to the Giver

In every deed and thought

Let’s rejoice in each little moment

And not let it fritter away

With pining and fretting and torment

Over fear of ‘come what may’

Let’s live our best day ever

Drink in the morning sun

Or if the sky is a river

Let’s thank God for mercy shown

Let’s grasp the faith like a wee child

Without debating and doubt

For ‘whosoever comes to Him

He will in no wise cast out’

Let’s live our best day ever

Yesterday cannot return

To undo those things we’d rather

But oh, from it we can learn

And live the best day ever

For tomorrow holds no guarantee

‘This is the day the Lord has made’

Let’s rejoice and live it thankfully 

The above link will take you to the source of my inspiration;)

© Janet Martin

Tick-tock

Time...

What is it?

This ethereal surface

on which we spill

spectacular failure

and humble triumph

Tick-tock...

Time,
a sequence of heartbeats

and thoughts
and impulse
 

Tick-tock

It whispers its passage

down transient corridors

to the unknown...

Tick-tock...

...until infinite eternity

unshod by half-breaths

and stolen moments
and the ticking
of forever

© Janet Martin

We Are Beautiful

There is a wondrous beauty

Clothing us from deep within

Beneath the shallow proof of Time

Caressed upon our skin

The mirror does not show the man

Only our mortal face

It graciously conceals the span

Of our vast disgrace

Yet, God in tender love and grace

To all who trust His name

Clothes us with His pure righteousness

In garments without shame

The world may judge our clothes and frown

But they cannot behold

The beauty of a royal gown

Clothing a blood-bought soul

© Janet Martin

I read this verse this morning and was glad.

I delight greatly in the LORD;
   my soul rejoices in my God.
For he has clothed me with garments of salvation
   and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness,
as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest,
   and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

 Isa. 61:10