From Heaven's Mercy-wheel

 It is good to give thanks to the LORD 

And to sing praises to Your name, O Most High;  

To declare Your loving-kindness in the morning 

And Your faithfulness by night...

Psalms 92:1-2

From founts grounded in air

The lilt of daylight brims

And overflows in gold and rose

And hallelujah hymns

Contagious is the hope

Cascading from yon deep

Arise, arise, for how time flies

Toward its final sleep

This settlement of dust

For all its ache and groan

Compels us to revel anew

On this; earth’s stepping-stone

Mankind can only reach

His plebeian demands

Bear witness to a kindly New

Refilling fumbling hands

From founts of patient grace

Morning majesty pours

Across this dirt of toil and hurt

From Today’s far-flung doors

Soon too, this door will close

And never break its seal

Come, where dawn flows in gold and rose

From heaven’s mercy-wheel

© Janet Martin

Where Darkness Like An Inkwell Taunts...

The night can keen beggarly want

And stoke the quill twixt fingers caught

The darkness like an inkwell taunts

The quiet with nothing but thought

The aptitude of thought can vex

Her best-laid plans of books and tea

Suggestions of surprise perplex

Slumbering mood with poetry

The mind is never still, it seems

One thought follows the next until

It sorts through matter-facts and dreams

To wanders past the window-sill

And what or where or who thought sees

Upon the transport of a sigh

Depends upon the brooding breeze

And how it strums its lullaby

The aftermath of middle day

The laughter of its afternoon

Falls up into the Milky Way

To spill from a star-dazzled spoon

The water-colored sky of dusk

Is hung upon a memory

The night can keen thought-streams of us

And vex the dark with poetry

Bygone can never bar the air

Thought tends to trespass at free will

Where darkness is a thoroughfare

For the trespasser with a quill

© Janet Martin

It Is September, Love

 

You know that Thing we just started; well, we’re halfway through…September!

Happy Half-way Day to you;-)

That place of purple morning-mist

And blue-gold afternoon

Where tousled garden-paths untwist

A poet’s Brigadoon

That grace of summer not quite spent

And winter not quite near

Of white and azure gilded tent

Atop earth’s windswept pier

That room of bloom and soft-strummed leaf

And cricket minuet

That paradise of harvest-sheaf

And petal pirouette

A sanguine spark before the dark

Of early late-day dusk

A world of stragglers in time’s park

Heady with plum-sweet musk

That place of Holding’s letting go

Of laughter’s treasure-trove

Runs through our touch like sunbeam snow

It is September, love

© Janet Martin

Bottoms Up...on repentance, that is...

Canadians have the reputation of being extremely apologetic; we say I’m sorry for every little oops and faux pas even though repentance never crosses our minds.

I remember being challenged with the ‘are you sorry you did it or sorry you got caught?’ question when I was young and I never forgot it…only the ‘sorry I did it’ reckons repentance.

Dr. Lakeland suggests this; a national repentance—from the bottom up, perhaps—may be our only hope.

We can apologize

Again and again

But only repentance

Brings about change

I’m sorry; the chieftain

Of Verbal fraud

Without Repentance

Before God

I’m sorry is nothing

But noisy Mouth-art

Without repentance

From the heart

© Janet Martin

Repent Definition;

1.  to feel sorry, self-reproachful, or contrite for past conduct; regret or be conscience-stricken about a past action, attitude, etc. (often followed by of):

He repented after his thoughtless act.

2.   to feel such sorrow for sin or fault as to be disposed to change one's life for the better; be penitent.

verb (used with object)

3. to remember or regard with self-reproach or contrition:

to repent one's injustice to another.

4.  to feel sorry for; regret:

to repent an imprudent act.

  Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord,

Acts 3:19 NIV

New Day; Altar and Battlefield

Raven, tree-silhouettes are sketched

Etched on a backdrop of new day

New day is like an altar stretched

Upon time’s rudiments of clay

And we who bear the yoke of toil

Lay on it, shrines of loss and spoil

Skylines and front-lines reappear

We refer to sight, sound and touch

But battle with bonds that adhere

To elements of faith and trust

As modern-day goliaths jeer

And we tremble with doubt and fear

The Name that David lifted high

Bestowed courage to see him through

With that same Name, ah, you and I

Can face our greatest giants too

And march into life’s battlefield

The name of God our strength and shield

© Janet Martin

 Then David said to the Philistine, “You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.  This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head. And I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel,  and that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the Lord's, and he will give you into our hand.” 1 Sam.17:45-47