Impact of Imminence

Imminence swells, unfolds then breaks

To rest in Bygone’s frozen lakes

None can its free-fall resurrect

We live within after-effect

For though a moment soon is gone

Its consequence ripples and spawns

Another wave from there to here

It swells to break and disappear

As future-present-past connect

We live in After-effect

© Janet Martin

A peek at what happened during the delivering of this poem...'hey mom,' says daughter before leaving to get her hair done. 'Which one do you think would look best on me?' and she flips through a bunch of pictures on her phone of models with perfect hair ; then, 'oh, if you're going out can you buy four boxes of fresh straw-berries so I can make some jam to do teacher-gifts for the morning?' next; we look for my purse, find it, figure out how much to spend...back to the poem, 'now where was I?'

Ultimately, the conception of this poem began while listening to this message as I tidied the house...

So, Here It Is

So, here it is and so are we

Eager for what we cannot see

But soon its emptiness will frame

For each and every one the same

From vaults that no one can appease

This thing making new memories

Then, when the evening star is lit

And we pause to reflect a bit

As what now is wafts to what was

It steals our very breath because

Often it slips our thought with ease

That we are making memories

These ties that bind will someday break

Living’s design of give and take

Is all we have with which to fill

A place that oft returns at will

To echo on some dark night breeze

Where now we make those memories

So, here it is and so are we

A touch-taste-tremble odyssey

Before the scrim of sunset seals

What soon will be to phantom reels

That none can change; God, help us, please

For we are making memories

© Janet Martin

So, because I've been pondering this idea of days being like a thread weaving memories, when she came to me last night and softly touched my arm, asking 'May I have nine girls over for a school-year- end celebration on Friday?' to her astonishment I said 'yes':)

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.