When the Evening Shadows Cast...

When the evening shadows cast

Phantom sketches on earth’s sod

Yesterdays’ tomorrow past

Tell me, do you think of God?

When this dance of daylight dies

Leaving only thought behind

Where we scattered memories

Does God ever cross your mind?

When we’ve drained each mercy-drop

From a cup we cannot see

Tell me, do you ever stop

To say, ‘God, how I love Thee’?

Before you drift off to sleep

Tell me, what will tune your thought?

Will it be eternity?

Or something you sold or bought?

Like a ripple on a pond

Is Time’s little leap of grace

Highway to the Great Beyond

Where we’ll meet God face to face

© Janet Martin

Siphoning Sparkles...

We inhale Future and then exhale Past

Present dissolves in poetical gasp

Where soon dusk siphons a clock’s faithful fray

Into immortal clasp of Yesterday

I will be a dreamer until I die

No brute or schemer can siphon the sky

From east to west dawn to noon-tide ascends

Dripping to darkness where day’s circuit ends

Silver and gold weigh our pockets with care

I choose the treasure of laughter-drenched air

Free-fall of moments runs rampant and free

We siphon its pearls into poetry

Come, for the hour is rich with Today

Soon it will sparkle up, up and away

Inhale, exhale grace-gilded filigree

Willing its wonder into poetry

© Janet Martin

The Heart Has No Draw-string...

The heart has no draw-string

But spills constantly

Into life’s moments

Molding memory

Time is too precious

To clench; thus we dare

To love though its losses

Are grueling to bear

Into empty moments

We fling our trust

Before its extolments

Embellish time's dust

Darling, the night

Soon eclipses Today

I’ll spill my heart

To taste come-then-what-may

…for the heart has no draw-string

And I cannot keep

Music of moments

From vexing its deep

© Janet Martin

Fulcrum

 

All those things that we recall are molded where Now-moments fall

Future hinges onto Past

Ether-spectrum arching where

Present ever spreads its path

Fulcrum of our 'here to there'

Everything exists in Now

What once was or yet will be

We cannot  touch or bestow

Rearrangements to its lea

Now; a state forever fixed

Through our touch Time wends its way

Present is the binding twixt

Tomorrow and Yesterday

Awesome, ephemeral Now

Future leans potency on

Present's mystic moment-flow

And the shadows it will spawn

Janet Martin

The Future

PAD Challenge day 10: write a future poem

The Future is at the mercy

Not of Past but Present

It leaves in its wake

Outgrown shoes,

Cookies crumbs

And echoes of what once was

The Future dreams…

…'of living in the UK because

She like the rain’

She tells me

Over breakfast

And morning prayers

The Future boards school-buses

Consuming much more

Than we know

As it strips the Present

Of its offering

Before it is Past

The Future bounces basket-balls

With eyes on a skyline

Of endless possibility,

Home is a launch-pad

To destinations

Unknown

Here they come,

Blue-green-brown-eyed

Blond-brunette potential

The Future; at the mercy

Of choices we make

Today

© Janet Martin

Today Matt’s classmate (Gr. 10) is getting his foot amputated in hopes of ridding his body of cancer. While his buddies dream of baseball, driving, girls…Colton dreams of having a Future.

Hugs and prayers, Colton and family.

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