Transcendent Trio

Tested by murderous masses

That fear and hate approve

We cling to God’s sure promises

Of faith and hope and love

Ah, who of us could prosper long

Should these three cease to be?

Faith, hope and love, a steadfast song

To comfort misery

For faith is more than hapless laud

To hope, more than a whim

Love overflows the heart of God

And draws man close to Him

As long as human-race exists

Wars will not cease to be

Faith, hope and love the bond betwixt

God and humanity

Then, though loathe demons beat the air

And bare their darkened threats

They cannot snuff transcendent prayer

That Faith-hope -love begets

© Janet Martin

Our tongues are tied with grief as stories and images from Paris hit the air-waves...

so we shape our wordless sorrow into prayer

Dear Memory...

PAD Challenge day 13:For today’s prompt, write a memory poem.

I keep you around for somehow I have found

In the relinquishing of Todays

Though you cannot return there is so much to learn

From your tried and tested ways

Sometimes we slow-dance and sometimes your romance

Is a teardrop instead of a kiss

But I keep you because everything that once was

Reminds me to cherish what is

Your fleet-footed way soon becomes yesterday

Both darling and devil thou art

But I keep you near in a smile, in a tear

To fine-tune the chords of my heart

© Janet Martin

Haunted...

PAD Challenge day 13: Write a memory poem

He has forgotten what Truth is

His addiction to lies

Becoming a way of life

Now he is trying to remember

Which lie he told to whom

And when…

Of, if only he

could go back to the beginning 

again...

© Janet Martin

Love-letter to the Lowering Dark...

I’ll take the kind entanglement of heartstrings caught on sad good-byes

Where daylight drains its elements of laughter into sleepy sighs

And oft, I, rendered speechless by the happiness of simple things

Could never dare to spurn the payoff that the beauty of love brings

I’ll take the tender torture of what is no more because it was

And I will double-dare the dark to draw thought-pictures on its gauze

The laws of love are double-edged and I am often caught off guard

At tug-of-heart by silvered-sedge or leaves strewn on dusk’s still-life yard

But I’ll take the entanglement of heartstrings caught on friendly, fond farewells

Humbled and honored by how life’s most simple things ring glory-bells

And oft, I, quite inept at shaping thought into exacting word

Must satisfy my gaping mouth to stutter this, ‘I thank You, Lord'

© Janet Martin

Thoughts and prayers with those in Paris...

 

Everyday Artists

When God paints we all take notice... 

A brush, a pen, a pick, a saw

A spade, a mixing-spoon

A key-board or a steering-wheel,

A needle, wrench or broom

A rake, a stethoscope, a mop

Share this one guarantee

No matter what the brush we hold

It paints a memory

© Janet Martin

 "We paint with the brushes we are given".

She commented

I love her painting today...