Thanksgiving Day Praise

I praise you, oh my Lord

Your mercies never cease

In tenderness out-poured

Of wisdom and of peace

Help me to serve you Lord

Not for man’s affirmation

But in true gratitude

With humble adoration

 Guide my footsteps, Lord

Across earth’s beaten sod

The beacon of your Word

My everlasting rod

Your goodness and your grace

Oh, let this be my joy

Not triteness of this world

That time and death destroy

I praise you, oh my Lord

Oh, let me honor You

With gratitude out-poured

In everything I do

© Janet Martin

It is the official Thanksgiving Day here in Canada. I will be spending the rest of it hopefully out-doors in God’s wonderful creation.

Oh, Do not Leave~

Oh do not leave

Or else I may forget

All the words I want to tell you

But have not

Yet

An hour is short
Darling, please stay

A life-time is too brief

For all I want

To say

Oh, do not leave

The night is dark

And long alone

Silence is too cold

And monotone

J~

Another Autumn Sonnet

It pierces through our pampered summer skin

A sudden chill spilling against the earth

Reality consumes youth’s guileless grin

As teasing zephyrs harness languid mirth

The landscape tugs the hemline of the deeps

Across the molten autumnal array

Far on the slope the towering maple weeps

Into the sepulcher of life’s decay

The circuit of its fleeting gasp is stark

Against the canvases of gath’ring dark

The fret-works of fall’s naked branches reach

In unadorned humility and praise

Toward their Maker’s throne; the empty beach

Echoes the laughter of fair sun-drenched days

As leaf by burnished leaf the autumn drips

Into a vault of summers predeceased

Realization in keen kindness grips

The heart in melodies of love released

And yet as seasons pass beneath earth’s sun

Love’s hope and happiness are never done

When the last leaf drifts soundless to our feet

And silence threads the passages of time

We pause; entranced within the bittersweet   

Of autumn’s sweet and solemn pantomime

The darling rose, the crimson anemone

Bleeds back into the dust from whence it sprung

And in the haunting hollow undertone

Of early night we hear a still-song flung

Into the void of autumn’s barrenness

Beneath the Hand of hope’s tender caress

© Janet Martin

Thanksgiving Praise Sonnet

How gracious is the Hand tinting the tress

With scarlet hues and bronze-petal array

He draws the eye to summer’s swift decay

And gilds the autumn strand with awesomeness

Beneath the lowered arches of the cloud

The earth responds to Heaven’s will sublime

To everything purposed thing there is a time

Thus seasons pass through mercy’s tender shroud

And mortal marvels at His patient grace

That He should please our gaze with such delight

When oft we fret and thanklessly we pine

He lends to earth the shadow of a Place

Not made with Hands; where faith at last is sight

Our eyes traverse the barred horizon-line

We glimpse His love; astonished we descry

But earthly frames of Him as we behold

Each season-scape; the emerald turns to gold

Spring’s verdant rush is fall’s depleting sigh

The quadrille of life’s swift four-season scope

Dances across Time’s charted centuries

Thought cannot grasp unmarked eternities

And as we cling to promises of hope

Our wonderment abounds and escalates

For what is man that He remembers him?

And rescues us from utter wantonness

A mirror of His goodness He creates

As glory crowns the humble, wooded limb

And gilds the autumn strand with awesomeness

Lift up your voice; oh, God accept our praise

You do not leave us groveling in the dirt

But in life’s grievous toiling and its hurt

You stun the meek spectator with Your ways

And though we do not understand your thought

We trust; holy compassion spills its heart

And lends to humble sod Your perfect art

In manuscripts of nature we are taught

To everything on earth there is a time

From seed to bud to bloom then back to earth

This is the way of dust; His righteousness

In grand profusion, wondrous and sublime

Imbues our paltry pittance with His worth

And gilds the autumn tress with awesomeness

© Janet Martin

 

Trembling...

Trembling

You came to me

Trembling,

I held you

And trembling

I loved you so

Trembling,

Soft moments

Slip by unnoticed

Soon, trembling

I must let you go…

J~

Hands let go, but hearts hold forever.

A New Beautiful

Yes, the week has succeeded in almost stripping this tree...It's next robe will be white:) The air has a 'white' feel to it this morning.

Do not weep

Though what we had

Has softly slipped away

We cannot keep

Within our hand

One jot of yesterday

But, oh my love

Within our hearts

We hold its echo fast

For sorrow’s joy

That day imparts

Is soon a shadow cast

But just as beauty

Fades away

And summer becomes fall

So, my love

Is this new day

A whole new ‘beautiful’

The canvas on

Which time is breathed

Is graciously imbued

With glorious dawn

And gentle eve

In twilight’s solitude

And though its eager

Fingers clench

Time’s ever-hastening hour

We smile

For it can never quench

The bud that holds the flower

Though it cannot

Revive the bloom

Of summer’s bountiful

It spreads across

Earth’s living-room

A whole new beautiful

© Janet Martin

Masterpiece

The other day I bicycled off the beaten track through a trail in a farmer’s field. It was so tranquil; the silence like a hymn, the atmosphere a paradox of hunger and satisfaction.

The rush of you embracing me

Is autumn’s keen

Reality

The beautiful and bittersweet

Fall like gold leaves

At my feet

Behind me tender echoes flow

Before me hope

And hunger glow

The whisper of your lips is kind

Soft fingertips

Against my mind

The rolling landscape of the past

Shapes memories;

I hold them fast

Love paints its precious, priceless art

To fill the walls

Within the heart

The rush of you embracing me

Blends agony

And ecstasy…

…where life demands tender release

Ah, this is love’s true

Masterpiece

© Janet Martin

My daughter told me last night when she looks out at all the autumn beauty, she is so totally happy and so completely sad…yes, me too.

Caledonia   the landscape 'felt' like the music in this song...
J~    

When all the World is Red and Gold

When all the world is red and gold

Against a gray-blue slate

When bounty gleams where buds unfold

To fill earth’s burnished plate

When lilting zephyrs start to moan

Adrift on autumn’s sway

We sense the solemn undertone

Of Time slipping away

The aster sheds its purple tear

The milkweed spills its pod

As remnants of another year

Adorns the umber sod

And from the tumbled garden; wild

With summer’s aftermath

We hear the echo of a child

Upon its trampled path

The harbinger of winter’s cold

Is such a dashing fellow

When all the world is red and gold

With scarves of orange and yellow

But as the woodland sheds its tear

In each little leaf-flower

We sense the closing of a year

Beyond this gilded hour

The daylight wanes; the eager dusk

Consumes its moody fringes

In bitter-sweetness; soft then brusque

A gate on soundless hinges

Closes; the darkness has no sound

Save for the vesper crying

In leaf-notes as they deck the ground

…another year is dying

© Janet Martin