Of Wayward Long Ago

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I begged them to come, come to that pretty place of picnic-past, 

but they are too busy with looking ahead to stand here looking back...

The isle of summer sleeps

Beneath sleek, sweeping lakes

Where echoes of love’s gifted glove

On gilded silence breaks

Light laughter rides the gale

That slides across a place

Where none can go save in our thought

To touch each stranger’s face

For Time’s take-giving ways

Of living stuns, its rush

Changes, yet stays strangely the same

In winter’s white-washed hush

Its gallery of trees

Stripped, swaddled, stiff and staid

Evokes a world of memories

Gripped in blue-everglade

And from piano keys

Laid listless on the snow

The air is charged with melodies

Of wayward long ago

© Janet Martin

The Way of Prayer

 

 image source here

Praying for the situation in France...

Way over there

Somewhere

A prayer

Prayed from

A tear

Way

Over here

Will fill

With faith and cheer

The fear

that would be there

Without the prayer

That here

 we prayed

God heard

And laid

His peace upon

You

Over there

For this is His

Answer

To prayer

© Janet Martin


  Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee. Isa.26L3

Winter's Way

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The light stays hid beneath a grid of bars weighted with gray

The sky, a hill of brumal fill and hiemal underlay

Low on the air a growling bear we cannot see but hear

Lumbers across an albatross of tempest-laden sphere

The woods, they say are lovelier in May, but oh, the hush

Where wanting wraps in white starlight each naked limb and bush

Defends its stance of storm-romance and brewing, brooding bliss

As budlets sleep beneath the keep of winter's wresting kiss

The brook sings in a storybook and slumbers in the dell

The hinterland a stifled strand where autumn’s glory fell

Prey to the ways of winter; every meadow is a wink

To lure the footloose wanderer out to the skyline’s brink

There is a wall between the call of firelight and white

The dreamer torn twixt cold and warm to vex his appetite

Where sky-hearths spill not flame but chill; still, something wild and sweet

Lures feet from chairs and slippers to tromp winter’s gilded street

We all are small beneath the rotund swath of cloth and hood

But we must see the majesty of snow parkas on wood

And we must touch and taste and feel Time’s steel-lipped offering

For soon the way of winter will fall prey to lays of spring

…and soon the lays of spring will melt apparel, svelte, ice-white

And soon the tune of May and June will spill in warm delight

And soon the bud will leap from mud and limb in green-frothed fray

Where night unfurled a white, white world, for this is winter’s way

© Janet Martin

…another holi-snowday!

When Mommies Die...

 

Prayer is a universal hug! Hug Kara and Her family as they do life's hardest Hard!

When mommies die

It rends earth’s sky

With why and hurt

And sorrow’s tear

For oh, we know

No other who

Can take the place

Of mommy-dear

Life’s first love

After God, is she

Who cradles children

In her arms

And there her babies

Oft will flee

To still the tears

Of fear’s alarm

When mommies die

The world cries ‘why?’

Still, our words

Cannot explain

The heart of God

But this we know

His grace is greater

Than our pain

There are no answers

Only this;

That God is good

And He will keep

Close to his heart

With nail-scarred hands

The tally of

Those tears we weep

© Janet Martin

Also thinking of the family in our community(friends of one of my brother's and one of my sister's families) who said good-bye to 'mommy' just before Christmas...

This Thing Suspended in Mid-air...

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This Thing suspended in mid-air

Like canvas without shape or form

Where we spill our allotted share

Of love and laughter’s sorrow-storm

This thing upon which seasons slip

Yet none can see, in seamless tide

As generation-waves admit

Again, again how quick its ride

…this Thing that none can cup or keep

Or measure, save in days or years

As its rushes from deep to deep

Invisible, yet disappears

This Thing of utter gravity

Granted but once to human-race

Known to our reaching ways as Time

God gives and gives and calls it Grace

© Janet Martin

 Titus 2:11 - For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men,

How will we savor His grace today? Mine begins with taking the van to our mechanic.