Heirs of Tomorrow

Yes, sometimes I forget

…it isn’t hard to do

And choose toil’s little odds and ends

Stealing time spent with you

How swift each season flies

A soft and subtle reach

Teasing the baby from our arms

While we hug, hold and teach

Once upon yesterday

We were children, carefree

And never gave a second thought

To love’s wise legacy

The tide that carried us

Still rushes ‘cross the wild

Now we leave in its wide-flung wake

Our footprints for a child

Here run tomorrow’s heirs

To everything we weave

We ought to touch with tender care

The moments in Time’s sieve

A child, but not for long

Time’s keen deliverance

Will leave those things we made for them

As their inheritance

© Janet Martin

Before supper I picked up fresh eggs at a local farm. A little boy was hammering two pieces of scrap wood together in the shed where they keep the eggs. When I asked him what he is making he told me 'a sled’ and without pausing he got up, pinched his creation in a vice-grip and began sawing the end with a small hand-saw. Next I asked him what he is going to use for the part to sit on, and again without pausing in his ‘work’ he replied, ‘oh, I don’t know yet’, his cheeks rosy from cold and exertion and his eyes gold with dream-dust.

What are we leaving these heirs of tomorrow?

…these precious, precious heirs!

'Once-Had-Beens'

   

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Someday life’s little 'bursts of bad'

And vexing twists that drive us mad

Will be a blip upon time’s screen

And nothing more than ‘once-had-been’

These galling interviews with woe

Life's roller-coaster high and low

Are brief eighth-notes of in-between

What will be, is, then ‘once-had-been’

Nothing alights never to leave

And joy waits past this thing we grieve

Beyond Time’s winter wafts spring-green

While now we shape its ‘once-had-been’

Thus within our bosoms we

Cling to this gladsome guarantee

‘This too shall pass’; clocks intervene

Nudging each day to ‘once-had-been’

God, help us not to lose our way

But teach us how to live each day

Committed to its moment-mien

Before it falls to ‘once-had-been’

© Janet Martin

My friend is having a ‘when it rains it pours’ stage in their family. We tried looking on the bright side by remembering eventually this time will be a little blip in their lives of what once had been...so we went skiing with her little boy (the one I baby-sit;), had an out-door picnic, albeit a shivery one and tried to imagine everything warm and green instead of cold and white!

If We Believe

If we believe then this life’s moments plead

With passion, purpose, peace and holy fire

The boastings of this world are things of greed

Belief transcends its covetous desire

It lifts our eyes beyond the hills of grief  

As we behold a hope not formed with hand

And hidden from the heart of unbelief

For sight alone can never understand

The meaning of it all; life’s what and why

Is not revealed in flesh but when we die

Beware then lest some weaker ploy deceive

And we forget the Who which we believe

Ah, who of us can bid the sun to shine,

Or probe the deep to force a drop of rain?

Our every boast is hinged on Love Divine

To deny Him is to live each day in vain

But if we seek to trust Him we will find

Hope is not baseless serendipity

But heaven’s well-spring feeding heart and mind

As faith perceives the veiled with clarity

For then it is enough to simply know

Not by ourselves, but grace of God we go

Futile to weep and wildly shake the fist

At He who sends each morning mercy-kissed

Oh, what is man that God remembers us?

We, who hunger for carnal bread and meat,

Yet it pleased Him to send His Son Jesus

Suff’ring even to death, death to defeat

For earth could not contain His holiness

Nor could hatred impose its sorry seal

Love rose victorious and glorious

Dare we ignore its heavenly appeal?

‘Come unto me’, ‘no one will I cast out’

Will we believe or blindly cling to doubt?

Whoever comes to Him He will receive

And emptiness is filled if we believe

© Janet Martin

So many things spawned this poem…a verse I read yesterday, watching the full movie Ben Hur, realizing how easy it is to fixate on what we see instead of what we know…

Meeting-hour

I tried to imagine you

The way you used to be

But it seems you have disappeared

Beneath Time’s tempest sea

I know that we will meet again

To lean against the gate

To watch the paling deep of dark

And dawn amalgamate

The budded bloom is primed to fill

And thrill our meeting-ground

How is it that the hours rush

And spill without a sound?

…long, long it seems we bear and bide

Time’s surging under-tow

To touch those places that we love

And lost so long ago

The no return of season-tides

And tempests test the heart

Sweet, sweeter is love’s meeting-hour

When we have been apart

© Janet Martin

When I look at the winter-locked garden I try to recall the scent of freshly-turned soil, buds barely breaking, dew at dawn...it sort of feels like a dream!

Touch to Touch...

Eventually it slips away

Like it never existed

Splash ‘o gold or bit ‘o gray

the bitty road that twisted

Through miles we’d ‘druther not’ but must

All are simply dust to dust

Transient, like a bitty bud

That breaks through bark to flourish

Before it tumbles to earth’s mud

Some other dream to nourish

For nothing is a single thing

But links upon an ether string

Touch to touch, life’s moments flow

A swift four-season river

What to what? We cannot know

But trust time’s tender Giver

As we press toward a Goal

Not of flesh but of the soul

© Janet Martin

Snow, blowing snow…that’s the forecast and I think we are all wearying of it. Victoria just told me she thinks we’ll never see the grass again; we will because we know ‘as long as the earth remains…’

What Are Moments?

  

 We had a short-sweet getaway...here we were watching the hockey game; Canada squeaking out an overtime win against Finland!

Moments are soft, silver sighs

Shaped in hellos and good-byes

Soundless symphony or jot

Until echoes tune our thought

Moments are those half-breath spheres

Filled with laughter, smiles and tears

Free-fall from a mystic sea

Ever-present filigree

Moments; tiny cups we fill

With the vaunt of good and ill

Repetition virginal

Its well-spring subliminal

Moments are our trophy-tests

Living’s utter ‘worsts’ and ‘bests’

Moments; tick-tock melody

Preserved in a memory

© Janet Martin

Today is Family Day in Ontario so we spent it part of it with other families and part of it with our family...turning moments into memories...

Beyond Ice-cobbled Pond

The shroud of dusk tonight is brusque

Its air a bleak, mutinous growl

Of glowering empowering

The gloom dripping from winter’s jowl

Cold, cold the dell where frigid knell

Of bluster-blue incumbency

Deploys dissent; its regiment

A bold, bullying enemy

Somewhere beyond ice-cobbled pond

Where reeds in petrified repose

Wait out its will and grueling chill,

A soft and sweeter zephyr blows

It is the child of Winter-wild

He plays beyond this early dark

Where soon we’ll hear the cherub-cheer

Of children playing in the park

© Janet Martin

Tonight the wind is a roving rebel-rouser; harbinger to another dumping of snow!

How Beautiful You are

How can I look at you

Without renewed desire?

Yesterday unborn, but now

You keen a virgin fire

How fair your un-flawed form

How perfect your kind face

From ether region you extend

To touch my touch with grace

And do you sigh a bit

To know that I will braise   

The unsoiled fabric of your robe

With my intended praise?

Poised on the brink of you

I pause amazed and awed

For somehow in your smile I sense

The magnitude of God

How beautiful you are

In gown of gold or gray

You forgive my past and come

To me, oh brand new day

© Janet Martin

While driving hubby to work this morning so that I could bring his vehicle back home, I was awed speechless at the beauty of a new day's birth!