Always on the Hunt

Where do you find them and how? someone asked me and suddenly I wondered too!

How do I find you and where do you hide

I’ve glimpsed you on skylines and hushed countryside

Yesterday briefly I touched you and heard

Fragments of melody yet void of word

… I searched for, longed for you, but then alas

Lost you somewhere on June’s sun-dappled grass

I felt you closer like love’s ‘almost kiss’

Where daylight fell to dusk’s flaming abyss

But as I reached to trace your whisper, then

You fled to where none can trespass with pen

Why do you stay in that ‘next-to-me’ place?

Sighing in wind-song and teasing embrace

You break my will then restore it anew

Shaping, re-shaping my notions of you

Always in season, vague yet virile taunt

Keening my senses and stirring my want

Somewhere within me and out there you roam

Until I find you, dear elusive poem

© Janet Martin

Lest We Miss the Music

May life never be so loud

We miss the music

Or so consuming

We lose its romance

May love never be so common

We miss its miracle

Or so testing

We forget to dance

Look, look all around

For there is more

than we often

take time to see

May life never be so busy

…we miss its poetry

© Janet Martin

The Certainty of Uncertainty

   

Image Source

We stand upon the brink of impending uncertainty

The Unknown trembles with the weight of what is yet to be

Dear God, without your Presence dawn would be a fearful dread

For who but You can fully see the miles that lie ahead?

The certainty of life’s uncertainty would be a noose

And hope without Sure Hope would be a vague and cheerless ruse

Comfort-shaped words would wallow and desire’s hoax would snuff

The laughter from our lips if Uncertainty were enough

There is no certainty but One, Jehovah, our God reigns

We are not doomed to cower in Uncertainty’s dire chains

The certainty of life’s uncertainty is but a wraith

A delicate proposal drawing us to fear or faith

Oh Lord, our God the Certainty of You is all we need

Though we are prone to place our trust in what the eye perceives

Remind us as the certainty of uncertainty looms

You care for us; did you not say, ‘consider now the blooms’?

© Janet Martin

I turned the news on because it’s good to be informed, then I turned it off because it is wracked with uncertainty…

Do Not Be Anxious

 “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?  Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?  And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?  And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.  But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?  Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’  For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.  But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

 Matt. 6:25-34

Message on overcoming discouragement 

Of Flower-grace

 Every so many years this field is full of daisies. I’m glad this farmer doesn’t spray them!

Can we, with naught but ink descry

A field of flowers laughing by?

O, pretty planet, blessed by bloom

A wanderer’s grand living-room

Can we, with humble poetry

Preserve what Time will strip from thee?

Did God forget to gate His Berth?

And then, did heaven fall to earth?

How else can Eden’s echo spill

Like angels to wood-lot and rill

Where we, with speechless friendship flirt

With miracles drawn from Time’s dirt

…and where the grass is dappled, we

Of clamoring society

Should come more often to this place

Of sweet and simple flower-grace

Where bud is not compelled to pine

For something more than God’s design

The hills are white with summer-snow

And we delight at its brief show

Before the quickening of air

Bestows to rose what all will bear

A little bloom beneath the sun

Before our little life is done

© Janet Martin

An Echo's Silhouette

  

Tonight my love, the dark is ravenous for thoughts lonely and blue

When will the curse of longing wane without the want of you

I cannot dare to bleed in ink the breadth of what is not

Nor am I brave enough to bare the hunger of my thought

The music of a memory my love, is bittersweet

Like midnight when the moonlight and the dark of night compete

Or pictures on a heart-wall or an echo’s silhouette

…to think that once I thought perhaps someday I would forget

The habits of an hour remain staid, its firm discourse

Brushes a thousand afternoons to naught in soundless force

Before becomes the after; we are always in-between

The morrow’s sure uncertainty and yesterday’s ‘has been’

Laughter, like paper covers can offer a thin disguise

But it can never hide those frames we see behind closed eyes

Tonight my love, the dark is ravenous, the wind is blue

…to think that once I thought perhaps I would stop missing you

© Janet Martin