Bards of May

How merrily the bards of May

Spill sweetness to earth’s calloused gray

Now shouts the rising sun to earth

Of longing quelled, of glad re-birth

And hearts, mantled with bleak despair

Embrace May-song like answered prayer

How graciously the bards of May

Ease somber filament away

Oh, bonny bliss of green and blue

Of purple kiss and golden hue

We gaze with beggarly delight

On orchard haze of pink and white

How free and fair season’s bequeath

This thing of air; we lie beneath

The lacy arch of wreath-plumed bark

Where noon sprawls high, its gilded arc

A pleasant, poetic disguise

Where Time slips past our half-closed eyes

…as merrily the bards of May

Tease trees and meadow-lands to play

The tune we crave in winter’s grief

Of sighing grass and lilting leaf

Where soon mid-May reality

Is naught but bits of poetry

© Janet Martin

While We Were Waiting...

I would have waited, he told me

Running fingers through Fifty with sighs

Waited for what? I ask him

And he laughs as he replies

…Getting old

‘I turn eighty today’, the woman smiles

As he asks her what life has taught

She says ‘as I look back

Asking what would I change? I realize

A lot’

We cannot deter Time’s one-way

Its ever-forward flight

Bestows new pages of Today

Ah pray, what will we write?

© Janet Martin

Hubby and his co-worker, both 50-ish, met a lady out for breakfast and celebrating her 80^th birthday. She told them she was lying in bed the night before and she asked herself, as she looked back, what she would change if she could in her life, and she realized, a lot!

Jim’s co-worker laughed as he told me this and then said he would have waited to grow old if he had known it would happen so soon!

Wouldn’t we all?!

Beyond Fondest Expectation

Beyond fondest expectation

As we ponder, pray and plead

Though God gives no explanation

He provides our deepest need

Beyond visual discernment

As His wherefore we besot

God prepares, cares for His children

In ways mightier than thought

Beyond vaguest understanding

Though we fall again, again

God abides; love never-ending

Lavishes the sons of men

© Janet Martin

The Most Tender Feelings, Love

The most tender feelings, love

Are cupped where words elude

How does one spell the heart’s full swell

Of humble gratitude?

I love when love replies

In soft, satisfied gaze

And happiness is the caress

Of ordinary days

Be kind, oh sweeping years

And do not brush to naught

Those pictures of every-day love

To gratify my thought

The comfort of farewell

I cannot spell in speech

Or how it spills in half-breath thrills

When you are out of reach

The most tender feelings, love

Evade word’s fraught well-springs

And are best told as we unfold

Life’s ordinary things

© Janet Martin

Sometimes its good to remember that Busy Saturday is a precious gift wrapped in Ordinary! Off to fulfill its 'orders':)

 

Soft-subtle, Like the Touch of Time

Soft-subtle, like the touch of Time

Spring-green transforms the barren scope

And where the landscape dull and brown

Waited, it wears a robe of Hope

We cannot see a moment move

But in the looking back 'tis when

We realize the potence of

Life’s little moments gathered then

Somehow the looking back allows

Us to weigh moments in our hold

Ephemeral powerhouse

Inhale, exhale, gray and gold

Need and greed rival and prove

Not in some monumental WOW

But in moments, our truest love

As touch of Time its truth bestows

How mightily a moment moves

From here to there in soundless sweep

How constantly its passage proves

We have an awesome charge to keep

© Janet Martin

Hubby calls and sort of apologizes for not trying to get a cheaper deal on an article someone has for-sale.

'that's okay. I tell him. I've come to the conclusion it is better to be 'a little more needy' than 'a little more greedy'. Who are we to decide who needs the extra jingle more? ' God looks after our true needs and the rest is BONUS! Thank-you God, for caring about the 'little stuff' in our lives. 

My mixer has been broken for over a month and I saw exactly what I was looking for( a discontinued model) on an on-line buy-and-sell site but the mixer was in Toronto.(1&1/2 hrs away) 'that's okay', said the lady when I told her I would love to buy it but have no idea when I will be there! She told me she would wait and last week-end when we were in Toronto to look at my daughter's apartment we also got the mixer! I can bake again:) The lady told me she was so happy to sell it to the person who said 'I would like the mixer' and not 'I would like a better bargain' and she thanked me for that because she told me she tried to advertise it at a fair 'bargain. I really appreciated her thoughtful words...and I thanked God for caring about little details and allowing us 'breaks' not to fill our own pockets but so we have more to GIVE, not keep. Easier said than done but never too late to try.

Time has such a soft-subtle touch and sometimes it seems in the looking back we see more failure than triumph, but no, each moment is a grace gift, not to wallow or worry, but to worship and withstand! It is through failure and stumble we become wiser and humble...

Happy Friday!

On Being Human

 

Image source here with story...a must-read!

How often have we pointed with pious, self-righteous dirt

at another struggling in living’s quagmire of hurt?

How often have we stolen, for the pleasure of a lie

the very thing we criticized in someone else's eye?

How often have we decorated our sorry state,

knowing full well we will repeat the very thing we hate?

How often have we withheld the forgiveness we all need

to nurse our injured feelings or to justify hates’ greed?

How often have we stumbled, hoping no one saw us fall?

How often have we, by the grace of God, survived at all?

© Janet Martin

Here is a light-hearted, yet profound take on the story shared in the link above.

Mum by Daniel Romo

Man gets life for stealing tube socks. -FOX News I want to believe it was a quality striped pair sporting character and flair, rather than an all-black accessory that conveys uniform necessity. I’m hoping he swiped the socks and sped through the mall, tucked the bag under his arm like a football he was determined not to fumble, while he jutted and juked though the food court until he tired and a team of police tackled him to the ground, rather than him simply stashing them in his waistband and being caught on camera by an overzealous store manager looking to score a promotion. I’m unsure what crimes he committed those other two times, or why he risked freedom for a common, cotton product. But who hasn’t done foolish things for the chance to feel something soft, new, and smooth so close to their skin? There are times when we live our lives according to our own laws, when we give in to sin to see if what we didn’t have is worth being imprisoned in a personal jail and only our conscience can make bail. I picture the man sitting on the edge of his cell’s mattress. Leg crossed over the other, foot dangling, swaying from side-to-side like a   life-sentence pendulum,      white socks glowing under prison garb like shining informants that will never tell.  © by Daniel Romo. Used with the author’s permission.

Sacred Awareness

If we, without Awareness of this Great and Awesome thing

Behold, and touch and taste the measure of daily living

And laugh the hollow laughter of the blind leading the blind

Seeking in desperation happiness and peace of mind

…if we shut out the Truth because the Truth is dark with fear

Still then, that Great and Awesome thing will never disappear

For Death, life’s single certainty is every man’s demise

That Great and Awesome Gateway to Hades or Paradise

And if we sadly stumble without Hope, our greatest boast

Then we are, above all men to be pitied the most

For life, this gasp of flesh and blood is not all there will be

Immutable the exchange; Time to Immortality

If we, without Awareness of the One who loves us so

He gave His only Son to die and save us from Hell’s woe

So that we may have Life and have it more abundantly

If we choose to reject The Gift of salvation full-free

…and if we choose to grovel in a most pathetic state

Quelling sacred Awareness of a Great and Awesome Gate

Then, though we gain the world and the cap-sheaf of human boast

We are above all humankind to be pitied the most

© Janet Martin

"You and I are souls", Peter reiterated frequently, "living in bodies".

The Loneliness of Love

The loneliness of love I cannot bear

Yet we are called to suffer long its weight

And carry to the grave its cross of care

For in the want of Love our God is there

To guard the heart from legions primed with hate

The heaviness of love is like a stone

Not hung about the neck but on our tears

Where quiet sorrows rage, and all alone

We fill the dark of night with prayer-wrought groan

When there is no escape where hunger sears

The agony of love must wear its thorns

And pray the Lord perhaps for mercy’s rose

To fill the place where loneliness oft scorns

Our best intent; the air in wretched ribbons torn

Where Love its longer, harder moil bestows

Humility of love bears with kind grace

The dissatisfaction of humanness

Though we covet true love’s tender embrace

And yearn to feel its kiss upon our face

Love bears all things, believes God’s promises

© Janet Martin