When Looking Back

When you have swept the highways clean

And melted from garden and pond

When you have chased the silver sheen

Out to the sky-line and beyond

And oh, when you have tickled bare

The northern half of hinterland

Perhaps then we will soft revere

How beautiful you were, and grand

When you have vented your last gale

And gathered up your bully-breeze

And when this powder-painted vale

Gleams, only in our memories

And oh, when you gentle your greed

Growling at every crease and crack

Perhaps at last we will concede

You weren’t so bad, when looking back

© Janet Martin

For Troy...and every other girl and boy

God thought and He thought

Then, when He was through

He wove from His fingers

A most beautiful you

Your nose and your eyes

Your shape and your skin

Will never be made

Quite like this again

And oh, how He loves you

Not by what you do

But simply because

You are perfectly you

© Janet Martin

Inspired by a very precious boy whose name is Troy.

There is nothing quite as painful for a parent

As hurting for their child.

Evaluation Test

Who I am is not proven

By words, sweet and tender

But its truth is spoken

By what I surrender

Who I am is not stated

By wealth or by price

But its truth is meted

By what I sacrifice

Who I am is not shared

By prideful boast

But its truth is declared

By what I serve most

The clock does not tally

Achievements and such

It unfurls a Ballet

Of taste, treasure, touch

Who I am is not hidden

The hour will prove

As choice becomes action

Whom I most love

© Janet Martin

What is Spring?

Spring

is that thing

which smiles away

the garden’s filled

with snow

And where the

ground is

winter-bound

the year’s

first flowers

grow

© Janet Martin

Tangible Optimism

These wishes

Winter-weary

Work with one eye on the storm

And the other on a window

Splashed with sun-gold

Grinning charm

These hours

Swept with snowflakes

Cannot freeze Time’s moment-fling

And I know

From past experience

They always lead to spring

© Janet Martin

I’m working at some spring-cleaning early just in case we get an early spring! This is my tangible optimism!

However, cleaning windows? entirely out of question!

Far-fetched and Free

     

For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he:Prov.23:7

image source; public form

You came to me, far-fetched and free

And I did not restrain you

But chose instead, inside my head

To grandly entertain you

…and what began as nothing but

A thought unforced, unbidden

Provoked my will often until

It was no longer hidden

And what began as far-fetched thought

Free and un-reprehended

Became the very thing I did

Because I entertained it

© Janet Martin

Good or bad, thought is the precursor to attitude and action…

Our Keeper

 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?  Matt. 6:26

Ah, ye that first formed everything

Of sky and land and sea

And breathed Time to existence

Where nothing used to be

Ah ye who transcends ‘being’

I AM; beneath, above

Within and out and nothing ever

Greater than Thy love

Ah ye, who knows all reason

Beyond our vision-scope

And offers to our longing

Thy everlasting hope

Ah ye, Father of mercy

Hear these meek words I pray

And fill us with love’s perfect peace

Within Thy care today

© Janet Martin

All you guys down south, bracing for The Big Snow Storm, my thoughts and prayers are with you... J~

In the Fading of the Light

Seems to me there is an hour

After day, before the night

When the world is softly cradled

In the fading of the light

Here blue-gray dons pastel pathos

And the hurried-ness of feet

Pauses ‘neath lone star pavilion

On a periwinkle street

Now the cruel care of living

Takes a tender second-place

For farewell is fondly waving

To a day of heaven-grace

And its skylight gently closes

To the deeper tones of night

Nearer to tomorrow’s roses

In the fading of the light

Here within the hush of ages

Past and present intertwine

As we sense the turn of pages

Where regret and hope align

As redemption soothes our error

We, bearers of human plight

Sense a Hand, immortal, tender

In the fading of the light

Soon the night will snuff its splendor

Ere the morrow comes to pass

As we suffer all things human

Trickling through Time’s ether glass

But, before the dark’s returning

After we have borne the fight

Of another day of learning

Comes the fading of the light

...Someday, when we reach the shoreline

Twixt Time and eternity

As we sense death’s darkness falling

Over this mortality

Then we’ll hear a kind voice calling

Drawing us from endless night

To an everlasting morning

In the fading of the light

© Janet Martin