How Swift and Smooth The Song

 I keenly felt the friendship of farewell even as I dearly held fond moments on Mother's Day morning...But,with change come lovely new firsts; I didn't cook this year. Rob and Emily did:)
Melissa FB'd a very special card.

How swift and smooth the notes of life and love weave into song

It drifts upon the vesper where blue shadows scrawl upon

Time waiting like a stanza still unwritten while it pens

Tempo of tears and laughter into fond Remember Whens

The harmony of having held melds with our present tense

Where letting go and holding blend in stunning dissonance

Aha, tomorrow slips to yesterday; Today’s baton

Moves to the music from the lips that drip with dusk and dawn

Holy, holy, the melody composed by dark and light

In rising, falling concord of good-morning and good-night

Spills oft, thought-soft, as sudden music of a memory

Moves smiles through tears where years have wended, penning poetry

How swift and smooth the ever-after seals within its keep

The sheet-music of middle-May and apple-blossom sweep

Where ‘now I lay me down to sleep’ and rise and shine’ compete

Like Maestros while an orchestra plays life’s song, bittersweet

© Janet Martin

...of fond farewell songs. We all have one, don't we?

Would You Trade It?

Would you trade it? Those wrinkles on your face,
For a little more poise and youthful grace,
A little more lightness in your step,
A little more ‘swagger’ in your hip,
Would you trade the morsel of wisdom you’ve garnished
For that youthful gleam still untarnished?
Would you go back if you could today?
To start over in some distant yesterday?
Would you trade experience for carefree laughter?
Would you give back your children and the here ever after

To be young; to start all over again,
To experience once more past sorrow and pain,
To live out your firsts with no more knowledge
Than the one who must yet go through grade school and college,
Would you give her back, your lovely wife,
To start a-fresh this journey of life?
If tonight you heard God’s voice
Give you this impossible choice, would you trade it?
Sometimes I wonder why we fret and sigh
At the speed with which the years hasten by,
When in reality most would not likely go back
Knowing what age gives that in youth we lack,
So when wrinkles come and knees get stiff
I hope I’ll believe that age is a gift,
And God’s design is best,‘tis truth,
For there’s much we would never trade back for youth

Love, from your sister Janet

Back when I was 39 and thought 40 was OLD!! I gave my brother Dave this poem. In a few weeks he turns 50. The oldest of my 'three little brothers' turns 40 today. (When we were still all at home our family was sort of divided into groups; the four oldest then the 3 little girls and the 3 little boys:)

Happy 40th birthday, Lewis!

The Journey of Love

The hurt of love, like rose’s thorn

Can leave the heart ragged and torn

But love commits to pay its price

Humility and sacrifice

The hope of love, like morning’s light

Spills through the darkness of the night

Into frail cups of want and woe

Love grants the grace whereby we go

The help of love is like a staff

On which we lean; we weep and laugh

And learn to let go of the fear

That otherwise would commandeer

The joy of love, like bud’s full bloom

Encourages us to resume

The hurt and hope and help of it

To taste the joy of love a bit

©  Janet Martin

Of Old and Newer Nows

Tis not so much the What as the How

Tis not so much the Then as the Now

For Then is defined by young and old

In How we use the Now we hold

The Now we hold is soon exchanged

For newer Nows; this Now estranged

From us forever save in fields

That bloom with what the old Now yields

© Janet Martin

While Worth

Oh, in the coming-going of appointments here on earth

We might lose sight sometimes, of what our While is really worth

To love, forgive, to hope and live each moment to its full

Is more than dust-to-dust as we pray, trust and push and pull

This strange affair of daily care mingled with mercy’s joy

Can distract us with common fuss of love and loss alloy

And then it might be easy to forget just what we hold

Or that the worth of it is more than testaments of gold

This all-consuming, tug-of-warring heart and hand abyss

Of tears and mirth, for what it’s worth, is not all that there is

And well we should remember what this While will never see

That what we think and say and do is worth eternity

© Janet Martin

May the Lord direct your hearts into God's love and Christ's perseverance...

 ...But as for you, brethren, do not grow weary of doing good. 
2 Thess. 3:5&13

Thought-scape Shaper

This new day through Time’s gold-grey-blue

Will not escape our Keepers view

Its high and low and in-between

Shapes the thought-scape with what has been

The morrow and the yesterday

Align the time we call today

Today is all we ever have

Wherein life’s constant care we brave

But we are not alone, oh no

Life’s in-between and high and low

As time bleeds out its sundry ways

Never escapes our Keeper’s gaze

From bud to bloom to scattered plume

Today is mankind's living-room

But in its awesome rise and fall

Evolves the thought-scape of it all

© Janet Martin

What absorbs your thought; the past, the future or the present? Soon the future is the past, but it is always shaped in the present.