It Is Not Easy to Love

 

 Read about the image and its source  here

It is not easy to love with utter abandon

Of self

To say ‘God, I believe You, I love You’

Then lie on the altar of sacrifice

It is not easy to profess His love

In full awareness of He

Who beholds the heart

...and we cannot open our hearts to love

while clenching fists

It is not easy to love

Until it hurts

And yet

That is the only Love

There is

© Janet Martin

The next time we say ‘I love you’ we should consider the cost

For love is not a feeling, but a laying down of our uttermost

Treasure-chest

We trace them, but not with our fingers

We kiss them, but not with our lips

And oh, how their essence lingers

Long after the hour slips

We hold them but not in embraces

We keep them but not in our clutch

Echoes of times and places

Cradled in ethereal touch

The heart is a vault filled with treasure

Of love and its lessons we learn

As memory's immutable measure

Preserves what can never return

© Janet Martin

Let's make today's treasure something to treasure! God bless and keep.

Monkey-bars

Image Source

I push through

Memories of my own childhood

Scanning the playground

Where students

Like colorful bobbing balloons

Race and run

High on dreams

Of summer vacation

And suddenly I see her

‘Pink tee-shirt monkey

Dangling from the jungle-gym

Her blonde hair streaming in the

Three-o’clock sun

Her teacher and I

Touch glances

Laughing

As her

Scattered, flamboyant personality

Studies the strangeness

Of an

Up-side down

World

© Janet Martin

Yesterday I attended my daughter's annual June picnic at her school. While her teacher and I chatted and discussed the year suddenly we both spotted her swinging up-side down from the top of the soccer-net  as if to testify to our amusements and frustrations of a carefree, scatterbrained Victoria.

Kid's Poem on Telling the Truth

I ought to never tell a lie

‘Cause lies like company

And soon the lie that first was one

Turns into two or three

For when a lie begins to lose

Its word-woven disguise

We protect it from the truth

By telling some more lies

And suddenly it’s hard to tell

How many lies were said

So it is always wise and well

To tell the truth instead

© Janet Martin

Of Almost-Poems

Ah troubadour, vexing the schemes of pen

You dangle unformed; vainly we beseech

Your laughter drifting just beyond our reach

A madrigal taunting the dreams of men

Almost, the wind combing the moon-brushed hill

Unravels your mute, mystic revelry

We glean the quiet, poised in poesy

But you evade the ink-breath in our quill

Elusive lover; will we ever know

The sweetness of your nectar, fancy-spun

A sparkle on the sea in glints of sun

A rush of vapor-ocean ebb and flow

Ah, troubadour of thought-blood left unshed

The compositions in your phantom sigh

Evokes a hunger in the poet’s eye

For all the rivers that remain unbled

© Janet Martin

Does it drive you crazy too...reaching for that thought that cannot be spelled?

Of Stepping-stones and Unknowns

Come now, the dawn unfurls a virgin runway from the deep

It seals our cares of yesterday where all past ages sleep

A pantomime of hopes and dreams beckons us to arise

To live and laugh; to love and pray before this new day dies

Come now; attune our hearts and lips to sing Your praises, God

As we press ever nearer to that line twixt sky and sod

Today a bud will brim to bloom while somewhere petals weep

But our goal is not the tomb, nor our victory sleep

Come now, for no one is immune to moments as they spill

And we all are accountable as we employ their will

These cares that spawn our groans and test our faith like mustard seed

Are mercy’s stepping stones leading to Arms that intercede

Come now, without heartache and hurt our prayers would cease to flow

And we would not learn how to need the One that loves us so

The dawn unfurls its gift of grace into life’s new unknown

His Hands extend in tenderness beneath each stepping stone

© Janet Martin

When Man and Woman Say 'I Do'

All day I have been 'windows-shopping' until my head hurts!

...for this! An up-coming celebration

When man and woman say ‘I do’

Oh wondrous mystery

God joins the lives of what were two

And binds them tenderly

Then what was two is done away

And what were two is gone

As with this promise, ‘I take thee’

God joins two lives as one

Oh mystery

How can it be

Oh, great and glorious wonder

A sacred cord

Bound by the Lord

Man cannot rend asunder

‘Til death doth part’ hallowed vow

Recorded up in heaven

From this day forth two are one now

As long as they are livin'

To have and hold forevermore

What God has joined abides

Until that sad and solemn door

Where life and death divides

Oh mystery

A unity

Of sacred, holy wonder

This ties that binds

Two hearts and minds

Man cannot part asunder

(Repeat) When man and woman say ‘I do’

Oh, mystery of wonder

God joins the lives of what were two

And makes them one forever

© Janet Martin

…For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and join to his wife; And they two shall be one flesh: so then they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder. …Mark 10:7-9

Conception of a Poem

If left un-wrought its weightless weight

Becomes to heavy for my thought

So I must spill its mystic thrill

To see what becomes of its jot

I cannot tell its mind or mien

But oh, it presses deep inside

Nor can I quell its aching swell

A rollicking and restless tide

The sky so blue, the thought of you

The dawn, the aftermath of storms

The wooing of a turtle dove

The memories that living forms

The holding on, the letting go

The love of mother and her child

The secret bliss of passion’s kiss

The midnight wind lonesome and wild

These are the drops that culminate

Until they cannot be suppressed

And I must heed where whispers plead

And pound the walls beneath my chest

And then, oh then with humble pen

The world unfolds beneath its quill

As agony and ecstasy

In poetry its longings spill

© Janet Martin