Of Things I'd Like to Keep...

Love, I should never want to lose

The strength to hold, but then let go

Or never feel the breathless rush

Of awe for One who loves me so

And I would hate to realize

There is no pleasure ‘neath your touch

Or laughter in a paradise

Of home, where once we laughed so much

Oh darling, may I never lose

The wonder in a bud uncurled

Or plunder without second thought

The shadow-Edens of this world

I want to keep the war-like hurt

Of anguish as I see a child

Hungry, unloved and clothed in dirt

While others drool with wealth and pride

Love, may I never lose the sense

Of things eternal as years pass

And may I never lose the awe

Of moments trickling through Time’s glass

© Janet Martin

Cloud-shadows

It is too much to paint in word

This death of gentian, larkspur, rose

As summer’s azure shutters close

Above earth’s mesa, tangled, blurred

Spring’s garden of dirt-dreams renewed

And bare feet dancing on its path

 Boasts a bedraggled aftermath

Of fantasies tarnished, subdued

Soon, soon this faithful soil will sleep

Pitied by Mother Nature, she

Blankets its girth, soft, lavishly

With leaf-song drifting to its deep

Ah, we have gleaned her moments bare

Morning-midnight-kaleidoscope

Fine mingling of despair and hope

Flings thought-endearments to the air

It is too much for scripted rhyme

Remembrance wields a two-edged blade

As all these precious hours are laid

Beneath the cloud-shadows of Time

© Janet Martin

Of Imminent Interlacing

My love, the imminence of Past aches mutely on the air

The eloquence of word cannot appease its certainty

And though joy wings its flight it interlocks with sorrow where

Love’s labyrinth of living folds Time’s moments tenderly

Planting, tending and gathering; sweet hours coalesce

In retrospect we cannot rearrange its aftermath

How is it there appears a tear amidst this happiness?

As childhood’s fleeting heaven soon is strewn on living’s path

My love, the blush of morning fills the dark and stricken deep

And only by God’s grace can we embrace its mystic must

The fulcrum of existence joins Past’s everlasting sleep

Yet Hope attunes the heart in passages from dust to dust

My love, we cannot linger long to trace Time’s filigree

The imminence of Past makes precious every gifted breath

For soon a choir of echoes claims this present melody

In its fair, finest interlace of birth and life and death

© Janet Martin 

The other evening at my daughter's bridal shower we all agreed that our own showers did not seem so very distantly past and twenty-some years can disappear exceedingly fast!

Time is Precious

Because we know life’s moments flow too swiftly to a sea

And all that will be left of them are bits of memory

Because we know we cannot keep their ethereal appeal

Or clasp too tightly everything we touch and taste and feel

Time is precious

Because we know that seasons blow like chaff upon a breeze

And what is left of highs and lows are simply memories

Tonight the dark of cricket-song and autumn imminence

Presses against the markers of moment-deliverance

…and Time is precious

Because we know that all we hold must be released at last

And every drop of moment-gold will soon be memory-cast

How subtly the Painter paints; His masterpiece reveals

A quiet truth that even youth feels nipping at their heels

Time is precious

Because we know we cannot go to retrieve once again

The hour that has vanished like a whisper on the wind

We touch with reverence the gifted moment in our grip

Because we know how soft and silently they seem to slip

…so Time is precious  

© Janet Martin

The country-side swells with summer's end. 

As I use the word country-side I'm thinking of a lady at a customer-service desk where, as she checked my I.D. she smiled at my address and commented wistfully that 'oh, you live in the country-side' and I replied, 'yes, we do!' It must be so beautiful, she added and I said , yes, it is; and the frustration I was dealing with lost its edge because after we were finished I could go home....to the country-side!

Of Moment-gold

Sunflower song

Wee baby’s cry

Sweet summer morn

Leaf-lullaby

Flicker of youth

Care-free daydream

Dew-diamond dawn

Midnight requiem

Sink full of suds

Line full of love

Heart full of hope

Through God above

Day full of toil

Night full of sleep

Cup full of promise

Where new moments steep

Sunset, sun-rise

Too soon we are old

This is life’s path

Of moment-gold

© Janet Martin

Slipping Through Our Fingers...

We cannot hold for long

An hour,

A flower,

A child upon the knee

Summer of sun-gold moment-song

A midnight melody

But, as they trickle through our touch

Ephemeral breath-bliss

We come to realize that such

Is life; its whisper-kiss

A brief, beautiful holding

Of bests that life imparts

Slipping through our fingers

To that place within our hearts

© Janet Martin

Another Day #2

 

Another day dispels the night

And we embark upon its flight

Where its road leads, we cannot know

But by the grace of God we go

Another day ignites the dawn

A bugle-call of mercy spawns

Another portion of the past

Where soon its filament is cast

Another day embosses hills

As from the deep its morning spills

To offer us another chance

To love and learn, to dream and dance

Another day; sun-shadow trace

Manifestation of God’s grace

In humble hope we pause to pray

And thank Him for another day

© Janet Martin

I realized this morning, that without thought the first thing I often do when I get up is scan the eastern sky-line as my subconscious whispers ‘another day’…

But I will sing of your strength, in the morning I will sing of your love; for you are my fortress, my refuge in times of trouble. Ps. 59:16

Of Glimmers and God's Love

Can ever a song be written?

Or ever a poem penned?

Can ever our vision capture

The fullness of love without end?

Even the ocean-cradle

Or star-spangled galaxy

Are infinitesimal glimmers

Of God’s love for you and me

Can ever thought imagine

Or begin to comprehend

The height, depth and circumference

Of God’s love without end?

Since that cry “it is finished”

Lost, sin-cursed human race

Can freely claim the pardon

Of His forgiving grace

Can ever we understand it?

How I AM left His throne

Putting on flesh God became Lamb

Our sin-debt to atone

Can ever we cease to tell it?

No never, no never enough!

The wonderful, incomprehensible

Eternal Savior’s love

© Janet Martin