Tip 'o the Hat to Little Touches

I finished reading the book Little Women yesterday. Here is another bit from the book that brought a smile in my 'little while' with the Marches. Jo is learning the art of Beth's housekeeping duties after Beth's death;

‘Wholesome, humble duty…little touches here and there to keep everything fresh and cozy which was the first step in making home happy'…Louisa M. Alcott in Little Women

It inspired me to see where I could create a bit of 'happy' for our home...

 peonies from the garden

pictures for the wall

 

pillow for the chair (Birthday gift from my sister)

poetry for the table,

flowers from the fence-line

Kind little touches do so much

 To make a house a home

 A little flower on a shelf,

A book of prose or poem

To make the reader take more care

Of his or her wee life; aware

That nothing ever stays too long

And so we splash the air with song

Or set a kettle on to boil

To pour some tea between our toil

Where all those must-be tasks soft-smile

And add the worth to our while

…and so we put a pillow here

A sprig of willow on the mirror

Or walk along the fence to find

Wild blooms that wind-song left behind,

Or sweep the porch before we set

A pot of pansies on its step

Or hang a picture on the wall

Or bake a cake knowing the small

Touches of love cheer those who come

To little things that make a home

And oft we should season the air

With words of kind comfort and prayer

And treat this gift from God with awe

That He in tender mercy saw

It fit to bless a bit of loam

With happiness that we call home

© Janet Martin

I hope you are inspired to create your own 'bit of happy'.
God bless our homes!

(This poem was written with the assumption that faith, hope and love abide,

For then what good is all the rest but painted bits of pride

Then pray the Lord our homes to be reflections of His kind mercy)

Mighty To Save

The future of the past unchains the air

And breath-soft fills the dark with morning-tide

Upon its current of ‘from Here to There’

Quick generations of time’s sailors ride

On frigates wrought with naught but morn to night

Laden with circumstance and wrong and right

Toward a Harbor estranged from this wee

Arrangement of grievous mortality

The winds of change will never threaten There

Nor vex these vessels tossed upon Want’s wave

The beggar and the prince will soon rest where

Distinction does not note master or slave

Or recognize Entrapment doomed to rust

While seeking to ensnare victims of dust

Upon Time’s rising-falling tempest toll

That strips the vessel bare of all but Soul

Pray then to the kind Keeper of time’s Sea

For He can save us from death’s stormy grave

Or how could we endure eternity

Estranged from He who is Mighty To Save?

Salvation is Hope’s anchor; nothing else

And Heaven is a Harbor, but not hell

Oh, pray we do not sail, tossed aimlessly

Toward a Brink from which none are set free

…the future of the past unchains the air

And pours God’s grace to Time’s wee thoroughfare

© Janet Martin

I was struck this morning by a vision of a sea

Where young, old and in-between buck the waves of circumstance

Toward eternity…

Our God Is  Mighty To Save!  

 As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him,  rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving.

 Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.

  Col.2:6-8

Precious Pixels

 Moments are the pixels in life's big picture...

Moments accumulate to shape another bit of Past

From Saturday to Saturday the ethereal alloy

Of pleasure, pain, sunshine and rain; life’s grid of grief and joy

Becomes that Thing of moments strung together ever-cast

That Thing stringing together every little said-and-done

Is not some buried scepter but the nucleus from whence

The inevitable reward of choice’s recompense

Returns; reminding us the Past is never really gone

The rules we choose to break will take some time, sometimes to prove

The Reason in their reason; Saturday to Saturday

Spins something more than days of yore we scatter on our way

To harvest moments planted in some long-forgotten grove

God’s grace forgives but He does not extinguish consequence

From Saturday to Saturday mercy unfurls new fields

Where sooner then or later, by the fruit the harvest yields

We will be known; pray we are shod with God’s deliverance

© Janet Martin

Blame It On The Rain...

Blame it on the rain

It seeps from sky to pen

And draws from it a slow refrain

Of waning now-to-Then

Blame it on the song

That pools in ponds and lakes

Of leaf and lane, a madrigal

Of notes in circle-shapes

Blame it on the tune

Blue drip and drop can form

A love and longing Brigadoon

That takes a heart by storm

© Janet Martin

Thank-you Cyndy, for linking to an 'oldie' rain-poem today. I appreciate it.

To Fetes of Concentration or To the Man in the Moon

Pareidolia (/pærɨˈdoʊliə/ parr-i-DOH-lee-ə) is a psychological phenomenon involving a stimulus (an image or a sound) which is perceived as significant. Wikipedia

Tuning in to Wikem-day a little late. Our internet still is not working very well.

You make me want to love you

but love is held at bay

A wall of years, 

celestial-spheres

and comet-tear highways

like perpetual taunting

orbits isles between

a sea of wish and wanting

for all

that could have been

You make me want to love you

but love alone can't break

with pleading smiles

and bleeding Whiles

the miles that separate

 so we resign to silence

on either end of space

...I blow a kiss 

through time's abyss

to press upon your 

face

Janet~

After Words or Afterwards

A moment in the speaking

Those little words we say

Before the ever-after

That none can wipe away

A moment in our making

Before released into

The blue of ever-afterward

That nothing can undo

A moment for a moment

Before its drop is stored

In the endless eternity

Of ever Afterward

© Janet Martin