From Old Poets to Us...from Me to You

These worlds that interfere with touch

Where you and I are miles apart

Dissolve, where ink and paper clutch

Thought-syllables poured from the heart

Sometimes the vaulted far-from-you

Would be too hard and long to bear

Save for the pouring out of blue

…half poetry and half a prayer

To lie beneath this rush of time

And reach into its bittersweet

Would crush the warrior of rhyme

Where hold and letting go compete

…save for the wonderment of word

Heard hauntingly from age to age

Because a poet once was stirred

To spill his heart upon a page

My kitchen table and your chair

Are not so very far apart

For words can wing from here to there

And melt the air twixt heart to heart

© Janet Martin

Winter's Waiting-room

Oh, brook bereft of swoon

Oh, field bereft of sheaf

Oh, afternoon bereft of tune

By trees bereft of leaf

How still the barren hill

Of winter’s waiting-room

Within its sweep of umber deep

Sleeps summer’s soldered plume

Oh, gracious interlude

Of meadowland repose

Above the tomb of bud and bloom

A sea of silence flows

Oh, winter-ready ground

How cold and still you lie

The hour bereft of every sound

But Nature’s naked sigh

© Janet Martin

It was the silence that struck me when I was out today...clear, cold and still!

The Imminence of Yesterday

The imminence of yesterday

Is ever-present where the Now

Teases our touch with gold and gray

And tests us with Time’s here and how

The spigot from whence moments drip

Rouses a hunger in our core

To realize how quick they slip

From fingertips to nevermore

And in this flow of come-and-go

And have-and-hold’s hello-good-bye

We learn to cherish soft and slow

The here-and-now's swift silver-sigh

…etched on an alabaster reel

Of oh so near yet far away

Where touch is keened with the appeal

And imminence of yesterday

© Janet Martin

Excited to have Melissa move home today until the New Year.

A Prayer

Abide with us, oh, loving Lord

As long as moments flow

From this, Your hand where naught is stored

But what we do for You

Abide with us, oh, gracious God

And may our actions prove

Our willingness to honor you

In humble deeds of love

Abide with us, oh holy One

And let us not forget

The gift of Jesus Christ Your Son

Who paid sin’s awful debt

Abide with us, Savior of all

Instill in us Your peace

And stir us to obey your call

Until our moments cease

Amen

© Janet Martin

Bethlehem's Star (Today's Christmas Poem re-post)

Bethlehem’s star has not dimmed its glow

It beams clearly now as it did long ago

Into the darkness of earth’s desperate night

Bethlehem’s star still offers His light

Still now we gather in awe of His might

To wonder and worship and seek this true Light

Over each cradle and grave see it shine

Mercy and goodness and love so divine

‘Peace on the earth and goodwill to all men’

A message of hope as true now as then

Come one and all, oh, come as you are

Follow the Light of Bethlehem’s star

Janet~

“Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” Matt. 2:1