Incomprehensible All

(What wakes the bird to break night's polished deep with song?) He was singing up a storm until I got my camera out then he needed a breather:), oh, well I caught a few notes of 'joy unmeasured and fully of glory'!

What wakes the bird to break

Night’s polished deep with song

What stirs the depths above the lake

To fill its dark with dawn?

What urges green to gold?

Or probes each pulsing bud

Its rush, intangible, yet bold

Draws gardens from the mud

Ah, what rolls like a sea

Within the human breast?

Where apathy and sympathy

And joy and sorrow wrest

What stills the heart at last

Yet fills the new born wail

With breath of life; what binds us fast

Through suffering’s stormy gale?

What makes me miss you so

Yet comforts as I weep?

What keens the longing in our souls

To draw us from our sleep?

What refurbishes hope?

Or shatters twilight’s sky

To fall in petals on a slope

Where only clouds pass by

…or silvers dawn with dew

Or lavishes the lea

or kisses me with thoughts of you

Pray tell, what can it be?

What is this awesome force

No scientist can prove

Yet spawns the Want to seek its Source?

I think it must be love

© Janet Martin

 

  

We are Blessed...with Today

…and here we are, recipients of heaven-glimpses, oh

Gentle, the morning melts the dark like springtime melts the snow

The hour spreads and ripples, its circumference exhales

To tint with periwinkle pasture-lane in star-like veils

These glimpses hush our pleading for the clattering of things

And somehow what we’re needing spills to earth from seraph-wings

Behind the gray of rainy day, we know an ocean waits

Its ether hold will pour like gold through heaven’s broken gates

Today is quite unlike its predecessors, none before

Has ever worn its garment or passed through Time’s two-fold door

And when it disappears, then, only then will this day be

A button on the uniform of bridled history

Here we are; tomorrow is a foreign fantasy

But ah, today implores from us the best that we can be

To touch kind heaven-glimpses with the wonder of a child

To let our fingers linger where the love of God runs wild

What good are our long faces with our bellies full of bread?

Unfold those fists; God’s graces are not drum-rolls for the dead

Where dread and worry tramples beneath ever-seeking feet

Love’s delicate examples of God-gifted meadow-sweet

Here we are, but only for a little while then we

Like Time, but with a soul will fade into eternity

Our remnant like the seeds that fall where barren blossoms die

Come, now the hour pleads from God, ah, how will we reply?

© Janet Martin

...my first reply will be with cloth and broom, then we'll see;)

This Life

This trip-slip, death-grip, fumbling, stumbling, fully humbling flight

This ‘it seems I must learn through my mistakes what I do right’

This churning, yearning, no-returning, ever-learning leap

Propels us ever onward; rise ‘n shine, labor and sleep

This groping, hoping, coping, holding, folding dawn to dusk

This ‘count your many blessings’ journey and ‘in God we trust’

This crying, sighing, trying, wondering, pondering surge

Does not excuse us from its quest as dark and daylight merge

This bloody, muddy study vexes and perplexes us

This all-consuming rooming-house of living’s muss and fuss

This trial-and-error troubling terror would be hard to bear

If we couldn’t call on Jesus in love’s tender splendor; prayer

© Janet Martin

  

This All-knowing God

This all-knowing God

Knows far beyond our thought

Oh, that we would learn to trust

In all we deem is not

Our understanding pales

Where His mercy begins

Subordinate acumen fails

In creatures prone to sin

Yet, this all-knowing God

Loves us beyond our greed

We covet our desires, but

He knows our deepest need

© Janet Martin

 Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him;
    fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way,
    over the man who carries out evil devices! Ps. 37:7

It is so hard not to fret; esp. where the desires for our loved ones are concerned!

This message really spoke to me today!

...That Which Mutes Pen and Poetry

Sometimes as a mother, I get too impatient to try to make them see! Last night at supper one of my kids remarked, they just don't get why I get so excited about a flower and I ran to the garden, plucked some blooms,exclaimed at the intricate detail and tried to make them see...

…and I would like to pull apart

My rib-cage to show you my heart

But even then, all you would see

Is flesh and blood mortality

One cannot break a seed to see

What its end fruit-result will be

Nor can we hasten bud to bloom

God is the weaver at Time’s loom

Discovery is the cap-sheaf

To argue with one’s disbelief

Someday child, living will unveil

Those things that tongue cannot detail

Love has no defined shape or size

Its lilts in laughter, bleeds from eyes

We grasp at words anemically

To jot its verve in poetry

…and I wish I could pull apart

My ribcage to show you my heart

But even then you could not see

That which mutes pen and poetry

© Janet Martin

...and I try to explain those things I cannot; how being home tending household chores and gardens is enough,

...I tell her, ‘dear daughter, sometimes I think you underestimate just how much I love you’

…and in the same breath I hear God speaking those words to me!

reminds me of this song; Coat of Many Colors