Inseparable Rivals

The unreliability of you perplexes me

For you are fickle as the wind we hear but cannot see

How easily you change your mind, and though you seem appealing

Your passion is quite undefined for you are merely Feeling

You stir my soul to poetry and toy with my emotion

Yet you know nothing of reality of true devotion

Your piety, seduction, fantasy can leave me reeling

Yet I can never trust you for you are nothing but Feeling

If I depend on you then I am pitiful at best

For one day you are naked and the next day over-dressed

I must search God’s sure promises for hope and help and healing

For though you rage within me yet, you are nothing but Feeling

The unreliability of you perplexes me

We, inseparable rivals agree to disagree

For you depend on circumstance and I find you appealing  

Your intense vaunt excites me yet, still you are merely Feeling

© Janet Martin

Flower-arranging and Father Unchanging

 Yesterday's storms battered flower-gardens...but soon new flowers will bloom, new dreams will waken.

Everything changes with nothing but hours

Spring’s barren range soon grows heavy with flowers

And where seduction of dream lured our thought

Soon we surrender them to what is not

Back in that place where we didn’t lament

Morning and evening’s swift folding of tent

We urged clocks onward and we didn’t care

… all roads were leading to greener Somewhere

Now we are old enough to recognize

How brief this family beneath Time’s skies

We soon will slumber where forefathers sleep

While here we number the years in our keep

Everything changes but God never will

He breaks the bud still asleep on the hill

Giver and Gatherer, Thy will be done

Kind loving Father to everyone

Though we may mourn, ‘tis with reverence now

Beneath the thorn of life’s roses we bow

Everything changes with nothing but hours

God rearranges our groaning with flowers

© Janet Martin

Sonnet of Sorrow and Summer Dusk

After the storm God sweeps the clouds awry

We stand without a word beneath it all

He spreads His miracle across the sky

Consoling earth with heaven’s madrigal

The aftermath of daylight cups our cares

In chalices of mist and moor and mead

Above, an ocean filled with people-prayers

Unveils a flawless floor where angels tread

And we, but beggars for God’s daily grace

Pause in this paradise of dusk’s embrace

Time’s fortune that perplexed our midday pain

Seems dull beneath this Brigadoon of bliss

Knowledge recoils; our noisy notions wane

What can we say beneath a sky like this?

And what is man, when we consider He

Who commandeers the spheres beneath His Feet?

We recognize our frail mortality

As dust settles where life and death compete

This grappling undertow of give and take

Is but the preface to our last heartache

Just as a river runs into the sea

And we cannot reverse its onward flow

Time flows forward yet into history

Its height and breadth and width we do not know

Nor can we prophecy tomorrow’s fare

We are not gods but merely mortal men

Darling, beneath this miracle of air

I cannot put mouth-babble in a pen

This little song-and-sorrow rigmarole

Is a riptide that we cannot control

© Janet Martin

Awe clashed with grief as we stood beneath dusk’s banner of beauty. Our school-community mourns the loss of a kindergarten student, who died suddenly this morning. 

Without Score

"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.

John 13:34

...But we will always be tested and tried

Grappling with longing’s persuasion and pride

Sorrow and joy mingle intricately

Where one prevails, ah, the other will be

Love cannot choose, but must bear and believe

…'it is more blessed to give than receive’

Over and over without keeping score

Love gives and gives asking for nothing more

Darling, the night wind cannot empathize

With our soul-hunger and pathetic sighs

Beggars and brawlers and sinners and saints

Suffer together life’s creature complaints

We are partakers of Time’s daily bread

Living and dying, a synchronized thread

Who can escape from Life’s Grief; who can hide?

None; we will always be tested and tried

… Love suffers long; it is patient and kind

We live, not for self but with others in mind

Over and over until Time is no more

God pours His Goodness without keeping score

© Janet Martin

Hellish Glimpses

…and now she knows

Love no longer glows

With bliss of ignorance

Words, razor-sharp

Have left their scars

There is no self-defense…

...to barricade from other lips

The words that spew in hate

If only somewhere on the air

Perhaps would be a gate

To bar those hellish glimpses

...one can breathe and yet be dead

Slaughtered again, again by words

That never should be said

© Janet Martin