The Plight of Human Heart

Like the birthing of a brook

To the swelling of the sea

It’s tenure not of flesh and blood

Bleeds agonizing ecstasy

Borne earnestly in mortal fronds

Of trembling lip and timorous touch

An ocean held within the bonds

Of heartbeat, thought and prayer and such

From whence it springs, I cannot say

But oh, it steals my breath away

Violent, intense, reclusive, sweet

It keens the mute and morbid dark

Or rages where the floundering dream

Pines for its pure and virgin spark

Its mighty ethereal eons surge

Fulcrum of ageless misery

Yet author of love-song and dirge

And raw, unpolished poetry

From whence it swells, I do not know

But oh, it makes me miss you so

Does jasmine by the summer brook

Bear unbeknownst, its misery?

Or eagle on the rocky crag

Do they suffer such ecstasy?

Nay, I dare say such wordless want

Though whispered in the wandering wind

And murmured in the hidden haunt

Where poplar sighs and brook-songs blend

Must be endured in fleshed rampart

Longing; the plight of human heart

© Janet Martin 

Winter-brook

 (Sometimes I come here, just to listen...video is a little jerky at first but eventually 'smooths' out)

She tunes the hollow winter hush

In rushing, gushing glee

Laughing beneath thicket and brush

A prisoner set free

Where cattails drained her summer cup

Autumn’s release has filled her up

And now she spills her lullaby

Meandering out to the sky

Winter eases its rigid stance

And from its frozen swell

A lilting cadence of romance

Sweeps through the dormant dell

A surge of passion-perfect pitch

Embellishes the laud-less ditch

Of silenced wood-song’s dismal dirge

She sings with grief-abandoned urge

Now high, now low, hastening, slow

Enchanting melody

As splashing, dashing love-songs flow

In sonnets to the sea

Lest soon the northern gales entice

To seal her lay in shrouds of ice

She finds, somewhere, a lenient nook

To hum the hymn of winter-brook

© Janet Martin

Wonderful Wealth

‘Tis most surely

A glorious

Luxury

To be rich enough

To enjoy

Nature's beauty

© Janet Martin

‘The need and the suffering is so great here that they cannot see the beauty’

Words to a friend’s son who was in Ecuador last year and he commented on the breath-taking, inexpressible beauty of the mountainous landscape. He commented that, ‘at least they live in all this beauty’. To be rich enough to see and enjoy the beauty of creation is wealth, unspeakable wealth.

I often think of these words as I marvel at the gifts of nature and the awesome wonder of creation. 

 

Sad Night-Song...

Sweetheart, the still is throbbing with a sensuous melody

Or is it just the night-wind sobbing in the willow-tree?

Seems I can hear an ocean crashing on a jagged coast

Or is it just the echo of something I miss the most?

Sweetheart, where is the vortex that inhales our fantasies?

What turns the sweet heart bitter, jading soft intimacies?

I hear a love-song sighing somewhere out against the dark

Or is it just the crying of a star that lost its spark?

Sweetheart, I hear the cadence of the midnight murmuring

A cello in the distance; or is it the whispering

Of summer in a garden where the blooms were lush and sweet

Before we sensed their petals cold and parched beneath our feet?

© Janet Martin

Of Prayer

 

I have friends far away that need our prayers right now; lots and lots of it. God knows what we have need of even before we ask of Him, yet oh, how He desires that we seek Him and ask. ‘Ask and it will be given you, seek and ye will find, knock and it will be opened unto you.’ Matt. 7:7

It travels through ramparts of doubt and despair

It lifts us from quagmires of fear

There is no distance that it cannot reach

It draws distant loved ones near

It moves, unhindered by evil’s intent

It scatters the schemes of distrust

It fills the unknown with God-rendered peace

As satan torments this world’s dust

It carries us through the dark valley of ‘wait’

It comforts as He intercedes

For we know God’s answers are never late

Because He knows our uttermost needs

Of mountain and desert, of vast rolling sea

There is no height and no depth

That prayer cannot touch in the instant of thought

And God will tend to all the rest

© Janet Martin

Please, could you pray for 'them' and their need. God knows what we do not.

Transitions...

 ( This morning it seemed as if the sun broke through a heavy wall of cloud glued to the horizon)

It is not forever

The cloud-cumbered sky

Morning will scatter

Its shadows awry

It is not forever

The dark-laden deep

Gladness will follow

The tears that we weep

It is not forever

The rain or the sun

Humbly we whisper

Lord, Your will be done

© Janet Martin

Pride Test or Trust Issue?

Crumble me then

If you must

Cracker in Your hand

Dust to dust

Humble me then

If, after all

Pride is forerunner

To the fall

© Janet Martin

Do we trust God enough to really, REALLY want Him to do this? The thought occurred to me as I contemplated some crushed crackers...how sometimes God has to do this to us for our own good, and then came a whispered challenge; Do I trust Him enough to ask Him for it?

Of Fellowships

To fellowship where slumbering blues

Steal over late-day avenues

And where the chill wind sweeps awry

Smoke trails from chimney to the sky

Where snow-bunting and sparrow flit

To nests as each star-lamp is lit

And all we hear is twilight’s tune

Dripping from pallid crescent moon

To fellowship with nature’s kin

Of tree and hill and echoing

Of seasons that have swept their girth

Returning thus, from earth to earth

And to behold the great, the small

In winter, spring, summer and fall

To fellowship with miracles

Is to touch living’s pinnacles

But for one holy, higher plain

Where heaven bends to heal earth’s pain

As we commune with He who shapes

The fellowship of nature-scapes

© Janet Martin  

Lord, our Lord,
    how majestic is your name in all the earth!

You have set your glory
    in the heavens.
²Through the praise of children and infants
    you have established a stronghold against your enemies,
    to silence the foe and the avenger.
³ When I consider your heavens,
    the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
    which you have set in place,
⁴ what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
    human beings that you care for them?

⁵ You have made them a little lower than the angels
    and crowned them with glory and honor.
⁶ You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
    you put everything under their feet:
⁷ all flocks and herds,
    and the animals of the wild,
⁸ the birds in the sky,
    and the fish in the sea,
    all that swim the paths of the seas.

⁹ Lord, our Lord,
    how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Psalm 8