Pure Perfection or Winter Vacation

I click-click-clicked my way across the countryside on skis this morning(leaving anything with a clock on it at home;)from sunrise to almost noon...oops.I call mornings like this winter-vacation. It was hard to choose ' a few' pics out of over 100 because it was point-and-shoot perfection as God drew apart the gates of heaven and spilled its reflection to earth...

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On some days earth

Is heaven’s reflection

Each twig and sprig

Pure perfection

Tug the door softly

Soon this will be

From here-on forward

A memory

Somewhere up yonder

A bird on a branch

Flits and rouses

An avalanche

Down in the room

By the white willow tree

Whispers a June-tune

Of what used to be

Don’t wish on sidelines

For what is not

Jump into life’s skin

With all you have got

The poise of hours

The noise of clocks

Sutures with flowers

And showers, time’s locks

Who can afford

To turn a blind eye

As the sun treks

Across the big sky?

Soon bold gold-blue

Of this morning-noon

Will fold into

A cot for the moon

On some days earth

Is heaven’s reflection

Each bend and berth

Pure perfection

© Janet Martin

The Reach of Speech

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H-m-m, so many to choose from...how will we arrange them and what will they say?

It is a privilege to share

This air, a common thoroughfare

Where we lay bare our thought with word

That once released can’t be returned

How fast past lips its passions course

The tongue, a small and mighty force

Is like a potent, pocket- sword

Its flash the quick of uttered word

The reach of speech is long and deep

A corridor we cannot sweep

Where both rage and apology

Can stun a page we cannot see

We should be careful as we touch

The silence with thought’s noisy brush

For words, uncensored and swift-tossed

Carry within their freedom, cost

© Janet Martin

 Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. James 3:5

I'm sure we've all wished we could retrieve words spoken too hastily...

The two-room country-school I attended as a child had this word-test hung above the door;

Before you speak, think;

Is it necessary?

Is it true?

is it kind?

Show of Heart

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I want to be so taken with you

That I cannot look away

When day’s full-color is smothered in blue

Before it becomes yesterday

I want to know I have held soft and slow

The hard heart –hunger of long letting go

I want to trace from your head to your toe

Every last whisper of you

I want to wonder at everyday things

Until I can hardly breathe

Tug at each moment, unfasten its strings

I want to stagger beneath

This fabric so sheer that it slithers and slips

Like a satin river through my fingertips

I want to savor its mist on my lips

And drink from its gossamer springs

I want to be, not footloose, fancy-free

But wholly and holy awed

By love’s laugh-lines; dredge the rush of a sea

Spangled with kisses from God

I want to hunt for the treasure of clocks

Spilling life’s measure in teeny tick-tocks

Pry out the pearls in sun-swirls, rumpled socks

Surf on an ocean of sod

I want to wake with a thirst for Today

To learn what I ought to know

Study time’s glimmer of gold laced with gray

Stunned by its shadow on snow

I want to be a collector of art

Caught in a shimmer of tear, tug-of-heart

Lest God forbid, I ignore life’s best part

And completely miss the show

© Janet Martin

 Life is a show of art, earth its gallery, God, its heart! Don't miss it.

Snow-sequins...a sonnet

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 ...yes, she told me she looks for those sequin scarves every night as she passes by:)

She tells me how a sea of sequins spills

From every windowsill; gold pools on snow

To charm the passer-by where winter chills

The dying day; and windows warm the snow

Home-hungry eyes at dusk are searching for

Gold welcome mats when they have miles to go

To their own home-sweet-home and wide-flung door

Spilling in sequin-scarves upon the snow

She tells me when dusk is an envelope

Wherein is tucked day’s final remnant glow

Then every window is a gleam of hope

Pinned to the dark like sequins on the snow

She tells me how snow-sequins wink and say

‘Ah, home is not so very far away’

© Janet Martin

Mercy's Memento

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...Then morning, like a beaming bride

Dawns giddy with hope undeterred

Want’s weighted ways, ah, set aside

For who can hide from heaven stirred

With virgin opportunity?

Bygone clenches its keeping glove

From darling doors we cannot see

God pours to shores of longing, Love

Resistance and persuasion vies

Where faith and fear flounder and fight

Silence thunders with bleeding sighs

on battlegrounds hidden from sight

Stilling, gushing from a fount sky-high

To our hungering embrace

God tilts the lilting thing called Time

And fills our spills and ills with grace

There is no doorway to the Past

To bind us to its suffering

From prisons braved and ever-cast

Emerges a most wondrous Thing

Untouched, unmarred, in spite of us

Morning is not a cruel facade

But Mercy’s memento because

Hope, love and grace abound, from God

© Janet Martin

Sunday Message for Monday to Sunday

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We should not envy others

Nor by that Want enslave

Our thought with burdens not from God

Forgetting what we have

All we have has been given

No boast has anyone

On this walkway from earth to heaven

But this; God sent His Son

Then we should not complain;

Has any suffered more

Than He who made a way for us

From earth to heaven’s shore?

This flesh is not a god

Its temple, dust to dust

If we complain and envy we

Forget to praise and trust

No one is less or more

In the grace-sight of He

Who leans to earth from heaven's door

In holy sympathy

Thus, instead of complaint

Or envying or boast

We should fill our mouths with praise

To He who loves us most

© Janet Martin