This Holding-Letting Go

This holding-letting go

Perplexes our reach

In moment-metered ebb and flow

Across Time’s phantom beach

Where love, longing and loss

Their tendrils intertwine

An ephemeral albatross

Of delicate design

How privileged are we

Love’s darling care to bear

The cap-sheaf of our deepest grief

Stuns us beyond compare

For in its gentle hold

We learn to dream and dance

Forgetting the climactic fold

Of double-edged romance

This test of want and will

Ravages human heart

While love composes madrigals

Its nuances impart

A tender, sweeter song

Of wildly, wondrous woe

As heartstrings resolute, hold on

While learning to let go

Love does not gift to us

Commodities to hoard

But grants within its lenient touch

A rare, richer reward

For touch, lavish, intense

Precedes the letting go

As it prepares a recompense

That holding cannot know

 

© Janet Martin

When Dawn Unfurls a Golden Sash

 It's so nice to see a gold-colored morning!

When dawn unfurls a golden sash

Above the hills soft-silver washed

And all the earth is morning-splashed

With Time’s refurbished Must

Then, we rejoice to see anew

God’s grace in glory-gilded hue

Where we embrace His purposed due

Of hope and faith and trust

When night recedes, an ether tide

Of dissipating dark to light

Somehow within the heart ignites

The will to carry on

For we are not forgotten souls

Ordained to suffer futile goals

Where Time its aimless air extols

In egotistic yawn

When, from a Fount we cannot see

Cascades kind opportunity

How grave Responsibility

Extends its pleading will

It fills the heart and hand with awe

Mercy and Goodness without law

Gifts human race with one more dawn

Love’s calling to fulfill

© Janet Martin

Saturday Waits...

Saturday waits for love to be ministered

In mops and pots and pans

It paints practical Master-pieces

Where sweet thought-wonder spans

A filament of fears and years

That ravished our embrace

As tick by tock Time disappears

To its elusive place

Saturday waits for love to shoulder

More than weight of brooms; its rooms

Yearn to be filled with gentle laughter

Where Time weaves from ether looms

Tapestries of joy and sorrow

Who can know what colors fill

Skeins of its afternoon or morrow

Spilling from the Weaver’s will?

Saturday waits; we touch its tarmac

With worship of whispered prayer

No matter its shade of canvas

Saturday will soon rest where

We cannot change one jot or tittle

Of its mercy, moil and mirth

God, help us to shape a little

Bit of heaven here on earth

© Janet Martin

Off to make this gray May day beautiful, by God’s grace...

A little, lovely romance to get us started;))

Where Is He? He is Here

 I would choose this shade of morning but God chose the color below so we praise Him for gray today...

Where is He that evokes

Within night-deep, the dawn?

He strums the elements with rhapsodies

Of rain and sun

His betrothal of hope

Saves us from vile despair

Where demons flaunt death-desperate doubt

His whisper stills the air

Where is He that persuades

The bloom from soldered bark

Or hearts to trust Him and believe

That once were cold and dark

He succors day by day

Though dread and deceit taunt

Still He appeals on our behalf

To triumph our want

Where is He that implores

From Banquet Halls in wait

While grace in boundless Fathom pours

From Mercy’s unbarred Gate

Ah, we have seen His star

…glimpsed grandeur in belief

The earth His fullness testifies

In every new-born leaf

Where is this King of kings

That lives in hearts of men

Yet cups Time and its universe

Within Hope’s nail-scarred hands

Wonder and hunger vie

We marvel and beseech

He who transcends sod, sea and sky

Remains within our reach

© Janet Martin

 "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him." Matthew 2:2

Yes God is where He has always been; everywhere. How can we find Him? Ask and it will be given you. Seek and you shall find. Knock and it shall be opened unto you. Matt.7:7

Of Love's Long Afterglow

There is no way to trace the dividend of you

You wrap your sigh, a twisted wraith

Around thought’s bluest blue

There is no way to know the colors of your art

Where love and laughter lithely brush

A tear into my heart

There is no way to spell loss left to yester-year

While ever yet tomorrow swells

With restoration’s cheer

There is no way to hurt save that of letting go

How sweet it is to wear the want

Of love’s long afterglow

© Janet~

Where Countryside is Cradled...

 Tonight as I watched dusk grow ever deeper it seemed She was tucking the world to bed...

Lulled countryside is cradled in plush aftermath of day

Where tree-line etched on moorland hill will soon be hushed away

The Artist of this palette mutes the tincture on His brush

For this is nature’s musing hour after clamor’s rush

See how the shadow splays its steeple like a fluted glass

How soft the restless zephyr plays its violin of grass

And where the world was full of noise and frameworks of desire

The matron of twilight deploys a kind and crooning choir

Priorities shift from the Seen to worlds beneath our skin

Where hope and heartache ever keen its fathoms deep within

Defeat, triumph, remorse and romance pander and persuade

The dreamer to keep dreaming where Time’s tapestry is laid

Hills roll into the valley as they reach up to the sky

A synchronized evolvement of hello shaping good-bye

Relief and desperation mingle, strangely bittersweet

Where countryside is cradled like a baby half asleep

© Janet Martin

Of Vain Vexation

Morning broods, like love disappointed

Familiarity juxtaposed,

Where Unknown wafts, an untold story

Ere its fortune is disclosed

Premise of love’s expectation

Tests the will twixt hand and heart

Perhaps we will always wonder

At ‘what if’s’ and unveiled art

What of all these years then, darling?

Will we find the words to say

Enough, or will they fade like dew and

Kisses counted yesterday?

Want vexes imagination

History exhumes its grave

Yet, it seems the explanation

Of its proof is all we have

Time is too short for lamenting

Hollows too vast for its might

Love demands our full attention

While we try to get it right

© Janet Martin

Of Moments Gathered In...

  

The above pics were taken a few days after  May 2nd, 1998 when Matthew was born...today on his 16th birthday 2014 I am taking a few comparison shots because there is nothing 'hatching' as  'little Melissa' excitedly reported 'way back when', that 'the dandelions are hatching!'

Earth is trying to muster a few brave shoots. That year my garden was planted. No one here has a seed in the ground yet. That year spring was an 'early' exception and this year later than I can ever remember...

The over-and-done is swiftly spun

The kiss of death wafts where

We laugh and run beneath a sun

Hungry for season-fare

The by-and-by soon keens our sigh

Its morrow, yesterday

And my, oh my, how soft good-bye

Silvers its gold and gray

The daffodil and tulip spill

Their splash of petal-art

Where moment-will and memories fill

The garden of the heart

…as foot-loose joy of little boy

And freckle-friendly grin

Will soon deploy life’s keen alloy

Of moments gathered in

© Janet Martin