Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Incessant Invitation...





We wait, debate and contemplate an hour’s incessant spawning
Darkness deflates, dawn’s swollen lakes spill over midnight’s awning
And like a bud that holds the folds of miracle and wonder
Time's gate unbars flower-like stars to spill its fill asunder

How soon the swoon of morn to noon to full moon fills our pockets
Life’s marketplace of grief and grace replenishes heart-lockets
Its flight ignites insights; invites of vaporous vexation
Dare us to snare from gifted air glints of paper elation

My, my the sky is full of Why yet you and I, loved dearly
By He who fills earth’s season-sills, are never ‘merely, merely’
He moves the Gate we contemplate; moments like budding flowers
Unfold dawn-gold from heaven-holds to fills our hands with hours

© Janet Martin


 I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord; be strong and let your heart take courage; yes, wait for the Lord
Ps. 27: 13-14

Monday, September 15, 2014

September-ness




Daylight dwindles to pink sash on the west
Summer swindles silk from Time’s season-chest
Autumn kindles copse with russet caress
Ah, these are the shades of September-ness

Goldenrod rivers rush in every ditch
Sky and sod quivers are mulled-color rich
Poplar-choir shivers, silver enchantress
Ah, these are the shades of September-ness

Blue breezes banter with keener intent
Caramel teases green-sheen filament
Plum purple pleases the palette’s finesse
Ah, these are the shades of September-ness

Bronze fronds respond to the touch of Time’s love
Pewter ponds mirror her heaven above
Summer-blonde heroes fall prey to gray tress
Ah, these are the shades of September-ness

© Janet Martin

Mastering Marriage...an Ongoing Art



 Marriage quotes  


Love’s culmination of differences
Must learn to co-exist
Its Mr.’s and its Mrs.’s
Experiments of risk

Back when we knew it all; naïve
To all we didn’t know
It was so easy to believe
In what we thought was so

But Time rolls out its welcome mat
Where love cannot pretend
So love becomes an acrobat
Learning to stretch and bend

And love becomes forgetful
For how else can it usurp
With heavy heart and head full
Of its insult and its hurt?

Back on youth’s dream-paved Easy streets
Answers exceeded years
Before we bore selfish defeats
And wore a lover’s tears

Before we understood that we
Will never understand
Each other quite as perfectly
As once, perhaps, we planned

…so love culminates differences
And learns to co-exist
Its Mr.’s and its Mrs.’s
Willing to take its risk

© Janet Martin

Marriage is a step-by-step fulfilling of vows resulting in years of anniversaries.
No one ever stayed married because it was easy.
Love makes possible the impossible.
Happy is he/she who learns to love...

The man over my shoulder (cropped for his privacy-sake)...

... was celebrating his 75th anniversary. He told us they announced it at church and everyone clapped for them! Not realizing the priest's mic was on he said to him, well, I guess I'm in it too deep to get out! of course, everyone laughed and clapped again:) His wife told us they still love to dance!

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

Friday, September 12, 2014

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??