Tomorrow's Hope

PAD challenge Day 10: write a future poem

The future has a funny way

Of turning into past

This little cup we call Today

Is emptied far too fast

All Unknown in tomorrow lies

No one can know its lot

The future, though we fantasize

Is never what we thought

I could not bear today’s regale

Or hear its melody

If someone drew aside the veil

From morrow’s mystery

We chase the sun across the skies

Yet every night it slips

Into an ocean of Good-byes

Beyond our finger-tips

One foot and then the other, love

Through both life’s good and ill

Tomorrow never really comes

Yet is today’s refill

The Hand from which Time’s moment’s rain

In gasps of joy or sorrow

Does not falter but will remain

Beneath every tomorrow

© Janet Martin

 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Heb. 13:8

Time is that Thing...

Time is that Thing we will never have enough of

And cannot afford to waste

Therefore I want to learn to slow my hands

To feel and touch and taste

Year folds over year; a sheer and subtle tease

Of morning, noon to night

And often I am blinded to the seamless ease

Of a moment’s appetite

When I run my fingers over Duty’s veiled beauty

I want to experience Love

In its fullest wonder because Time is that Thing

We will never have enough of

© Janet Martin

We all get the same amount of Time in one day...how are we touching it?

...I must be off to Duty's beauty lest I waste this twenty-four hour Gift!

Soul-shelter

  

PAD Challenge day 9: write a shelter poem

Distraction and desire dole Pleasure to please the eye

Then we forget about our soul or that someday we’ll die

Fleet favor of fraudulent worth vexes Want’s hollow groan

For nothing can fulfill the girth reserved for God alone

Craving and curse keenly ally to tune creature complaint

Earth’s lesser gods increase the cry for more than worldly taint

How indifferent is the sum of stuff to Heaven’s hope

Cold touch of things is not enough to help our hunger cope

God’s love too oft is overlooked; exchanged for rags and rust

Because distraction shrouds the Book that speaks of ‘dust to dust’

Pity the one whose only goal remains twixt sod and sky

There is no hideout for the soul and everyone will die

© Janet Martin

Beneath the Shelter of God's Eyes

 PAD Challenge day 9: Write a shelter poem

The sun climbs from its resting place

To kiss life’s road where we

Reach for another day of grace

To be what we must be

Flesh and blood cannot inherit

That for which we strive

Grace of God our only merit

In each day we live

Man cannot live by bread alone

Though he may think it true

And our best cannot atone

For sin’s inherent due

Touch this ephemeral dust

With glad humility

As we trust Him God gives to us

The law of liberty

Beneath the shelter of His eyes

Time falls from love’s embrace

Painting across the morning skies

Another day of grace

© Janet Martin

Rock of Ages; Ray Price

Not What It Seems...

 This day's farewell bore a special brand of beauty; earth is a mosaic of sod, snow and sea!

You lay your farewell on the land

In blushing little lakes

Where dusk deepens its ether strand

Slipping beyond the brakes

Naked vision observes your flight

Into past’s memory-streams

Before the darkness snuffs your light

And you are gone…it seems

Oh, let the weary seek their cot

And may slumber be sweet

Without worry to perplex thought

…or despair or defeat

For midnight, like a phantom-guest

Waits at the morrow’s gate

To usher in what will be next

On living’s mercy-plate

Silence prevails; you disappear

Up to the Milky Way

Good-night and rest ye well, my dear

That once was our Today

You turn to wink then slip from sight

Knowing you’ll come again

To vex the laws of middle-night

With poetry and pen

© Janet Martin

Nature-song

Spring will always conquer winter

Love-song from God to the earth

Trembling chords beneath the fallow

Rousing nature to new birth

Oh, let not your heart be troubled

From far corridors of hope

Throbs a glad symphonic anthem

Thrumming nature’s calliope

Poetry in wordless wonder

Paints its joy upon the air

Longing lifts its empty pockets

Filling them with nature’s prayer

Where the woods were cold and hollow

Something trembles on the limb

Prelude to orchestral grandeur

As we list to nature’s hymn

© Janet Martin

To the Woman...

To the woman who must eat her words

Served from life’s silver spoon

‘I forgive you’

Those things she vowed ‘she would never do’

She did

Too soon

To the woman who spouted inexperience first-class

Before she hit a wall

To hear the echo

Of Solomon's

Wise words

‘Pride goes before the fall’

To the woman whose firsts caught her off-guard

And whose lasts are a veiled baritone

As she stubs her nose, her toes

Often

Hard, to learn

Disappointment is a stepping-stone

...to the woman who is the rung

On a ladder

She would scale given time

But must be the step

Instead of the dreamer

While another learns to climb

To the woman who cannot rely

Solely on what she sees

But knows

...Time is patient teacher

Without favorites

And by God’s grace she goes

© Janet Martin

Two-for-two Tuesday Tango with a Tempest

PAD challenge say 8: Two-for-two Tues.Write a violence poem. Write a peace poem

When you touch me you do not come in peace

Trembling I sense your demands; raging fire

Of need, expectation, passion; you release

The will of your want to my nervous desire

You do not care for my well-designed phrase

You are a hunter for virgin surprise

Scorning the whisper of weathered clichés

Spitting at fraudulent, fainthearted guise

‘Come to me. Leave me. Oh no, stay I pray,

I cannot bear to live without the storm

Of you ever splayed in relentless blue-gray

Tearing the cloth from my well-guarded form’

Tug-of-war tango, you teach me to dance

Willing the courage of word to my lips

Stripping the raiment of pride and pretense

From me with deft, impatient fingertips

Eager and fearful, I follow your lead

Blushing, yet begging we battle the air

Raw, potent tempest-tide rushes, recedes

Until we lie on noon's banks, naked, bare

Panting; the duel of courage and dread

Spent as a summer-storm; then only then

Tender and gentle you cradle my head

Placing in my bleeding fingers…a pen

© Janet Martin