Oh, Sometimes to Fully Feel you...

Oh, sometimes to fully feel you

I write you down

Trace afternoon for your color

Burgundy, gold, chestnut brown

For often you slip from my fingers

Before our dance is through

So I write you down, my precious

To remember you

I pluck the petal that brushes

The cheek ere it vagrantly slips

Into the silver forever

Of Past’s irretrievable crypts

Or else in the rush of your rain-song

I’ll snatch a tear from your eye

And press it into word pictures

Where dark is stealing the sky

I caught a feather of snowflake

Before it dissolved into naught

Etching your six-point perfection

Into meandering jot

You never scream for attention

Maybe that is why I love you

And feel compelled to frame pieces

Dripping and slipping from view

Eternal transience, ah moment

Moving across my today

Stripping swift years of its valor

While filling a life with your fray

Oh, sometimes to fully feel you

I grasp your ephemeral gown

And as you slide soft through my fingers

I linger and write you down

© Janet Martin

Perfect Fit

Sometimes, if we’re uncertain

As to how we fit God’s plan

Then all that each of us can do

Is this; the best we can

Right where we are and who we are

Is all that will attest

To what we did with what we had

And if we did our best

So if life’s Puzzle frazzles

And perplexes us a bit

If we commit to give our best

Our piece is sure to fit

...so pull that bitty rake

and push that bitty plow

Our legacy depends on what

we do with bitty now

© Janet Martin

 And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; Col.3:23

Where Change Begins

We cannot change from the outside in

The heart is where true change begins

Though law may force the hand and such

The heart no scripted law can touch

…where edict of rules oft estrange

The heart to rudiments of change

For only love the heart can move

Yet, who can force a heart to love?

Love and belief; oh who can bend

The matrix of the heart, my friend?

Ah, there is One; a still small voice

Beckons; response is our choice

Yet, in this choice the crux of change

And all that follows it remains

For God is love; love does not force

The heart that yields in true remorse

Then, in the yielding change can start

For only Love can change the heart

© Janet Martin

One of the pastors interviewed yesterday in Ferguson Missouri reminded us that all the social programs in the world cannot change the heart where true change begins. Only Jesus can change the heart; the same Jesus that shed His blood for our sins. He died to set us free!

Same Here...

PAD Challenge day 26:For today’s prompt, write a same poem.

Same sky
same sweeping of the
midnight dark awry
to light the same old earth
with that same sun
...pray, tell me why?

The breadth
of an hour does not change,
its tick-tock force
eases these dust-to-dust soul-frames
to God
in its discourse

...and there it is;
the awesome why
and wherefore of it all
This same dark- light
of day and night
Leads to a Great Roll-call

Janet Martin

Today is Such a Lovely Thing

The corridor of yesterday

Has no trespasser though we may

Stand at the gate and wait, wait, wait

We always only have Today

And when today slips from this place

Of crowded streets and winds we chase

Nothing can trouble it again

Or snuff from it one tiny trace

Today is such a lovely thing

From it all forms of beauty spring

And wing their flight from morn to night

In subtle moment-winnowing

And soon what now we call today

Will be forever far away

Thus we ought taste and not to waste

This gilded crumb of gold and gray

For corridors of yesterday

Have no trespassers though we may

Stand at the gate; we dare not wait

And miss the gift wrapped in Today

© Janet Martin

My Today is smelling like Mr. Clean due to the fall cleaning I am trying to wrap up in November (and a week off), so we can focus on other things in Dec.

Once Upon a June #2

Once upon a June we were

The girls with flowers in our hair

And time on hands not quite as worn

By motherhood and

Many a summer morn

Once upon a dream or two

Eyes sparkled, lustrous as the dew

That gleamed before the door of noon

Closed on the wisp of

Many a moon and June

Once upon November’s eve

A woman’s heart begins to grieve

The suddenness of what once was

And cannot ever

Be again because

…once upon a June we were

But girls with flowers in our hair

Where now we watch our daughters swoon

With summer dreams of

  'once upon a June'

© Janet Martin