Here and There

Yesterday, far from a pen

You vexed me with your acumen

Now here I sit and stare, the air

Stripped of what yesterday was There

…and There, for all its fantasy

Is always far too far from me

Ah, perhaps There, for all I think

Is nothing but five-letter ink

...the ebb and flow of here to there

Intangible, is like the air

existing in aery sigh

That vexes as it passes by

The pantomime of rhythm and rhyme

Some deem a tedious waste of time

But they are There and I am here

And oh, we disagree, my dear

So There you are and Here am I

We cannot meet and yet we try

For There fills possibility

…here skins its air for poetry

© Janet Martin

Think on These Things

Think on these things;

We on time’s wings

Are caught in middle-prayer

Life's foreign phrases

On our tongue

Soon become familiar

Think on these things;

New mercy springs

Where we abused clock-gold

Yet every morning

God bequeaths

New mercy for the old

Think on these things

We are here

But oh, He is not There

He is with us

Both Here and Now

and ever Everywhere

© Janet Martin

I feel like I live in middle-prayer these days; case in point…today Melissa is having a new country-meets-city experience. Catching the bus home. She just messaged me with ‘My stupid bus didn't stop for me, so now I have to wait another hour for the next one

She reassured me she is fine but...

Pray with me??

'Like Petals of a Summer'...I Heard the Fallen Leaves Whisper

We gather on a green mezzanine

And for lack of good news

We reminisce

A collection of wayfarers

En route

To what no longer is

This thoroughfare is a smattering

Of this and that

And this

Yet we are transfixed

In the chattering

Not of what was, but is

Life’s relentless rendering

Of bud to bloom

Soon lies

In ever-expanding

Tombs; its rooms

Beneath a sweep of skies

Deeds, like seeds are capsules

Of much more

Than they might seem

Life's little season-vestibule

Is more

Than 'but a dream'

We are all newcomers

To this reunion

On the grass

Like petals of a summer

Where all things come 

...to pass

© Janet Martin

Of Everyday Moments

 Time of itself is a momentous affair...

In every-day moments Life becomes what it is

Its patriarch, the clock

Is a bully of sorts; no hit-or-miss

Tick-tock, tick-tock…

In everyday moments we shape who we are

Mute Want-whispers walk

Across skin stretched then shriveled in

Tick-tock, tock-tock

Time of itself is a momentous affair

While we boast, barter and balk

Every-day moments silver the air

Tick-tock, tick-tock…

Beneath the noise of come-and-go

Silence employs its stock

…everyday moments overflow

Tick-tock, tick-tock…

...the child outgrows both clothes and nests

Too soon; it comes as a shock

How a common Maestro engraves its tune

Tick-tock, tick-tock

…and hearts rearrange their hope-chests because

In a clock’s half-breath talk

Everyday moments of What Is fill What Was

Tick-tock, tick-tock

© Janet Martin

Lord, teach us how to make the most

Of every-day moments

Of Wish and Imagination

 Do you ever find that Time is a celebration of wish and imagination? 

Summer is far too small a world to ever be quite appeased;

it's a little like putting down a book in its best part 

and never returning to finish it...
It's like being wonderfully, perfectly...teased

Anticipation is mostly wishes

And imagination

Sometimes we are victims of

Fact and infatuation

The buttercups we never twirled

Between our idle fingers

Are gone; like summer’s sun-sweet world

Save for the frond that lingers

Truth has ways of telling it

That one can hardly handle

And everything we touch a bit

Like flickers of a candle

Somehow, while we love one thing more

A wise wind rearranges

The Very Thing we quite adored

Before we wore its changes

And suddenly on one dark night

When clock-rivers run faster

We realize this spartan plight

Is quite a fight to master

And even with the centuries

That tiny tick-tocks suture

No one has found the answer-key

To open up the future

I guess ‘tis best we do not know

The morrow’s explanation

Anticipation fills us with

Wish and imagination

© Janet Martin