From Yonder Port...

From yonder port the birth of day is forging

An invitation to life’s creature care

It dims the dark of night with light of morning

Like legions of hope borne upon the air

Then rise for soon the noon will be upon us

And soon this breadth of day will ebb away

This life we live tallies into its oneness

The sum of how we spend our day to day

Lord, pray we seek but this with humble favor

To love Thee with full heart and soul and mind

And secondly that we may love our neighbor

Thus leaving a kind legacy behind

From yonder port the good Lord parts night’s curtain

Extending to our reach a day of grace

Uncertainty juxtaposed with Life’s Certain

That one day we will meet Him face to face

From yonder port the love of life's Creator

Does not fling forth mere happenstance to sod

But renders with the light of morning's splendor

Continuance of hope and grace of God

© Janet Martin

 For His lovingkindness is great toward us, And the truth of the LORD is everlasting. Praise the LORD! 

Ps.117:2

 Because Your lovingkindness is better than life, My lips will praise You.

Ps.63:3

 

Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Ps.95:1

At the Mercy of Grace

I couldn't help but think of the verse  about the faith of a child when I read Ann's post yesterday...

No one knows what a life, a day, an hour will bring but this we know; God will never leave us!

Dawn tolls Time’s bell; we cannot tell what lies beyond the scrim

That veils all but the here and now as God draws man to Him

How will He choose to use what none can refuse? Mercy’s hand

Granting for our greater good what we don't understand

Here, in life’s common care we bear witness to triumph’s base

Our brokenness, the equalizer in man’s need for grace

For who of us can wash the guilt of mortal sin away?

God’s grace is like a fresh snowfall over earth’s dull brown-gray

It trembles in the break of day as He anoints time's scars

With newness; oh to count the ways of grace is to count stars

He blesses us and keeps us no matter what fools may think

His common grace and love sends sun and rain, melts night with pink

Then, whatsoever Time betides, His promises assure

That He is always at our side; God’s children are secure

And will endure the race His grace appoints with break of day

Fear finds no foothold where faith finds God’s hand to lead the way

© Janet Martin

The story behind the song Amazing Grace

  

For some this day of grace is filled with laughter and dreams, 

for others sorrow and the surrender of loved ones back to God.

One funeral today is for a seven-year-old boy,

another for a beloved daddy

Will you join in praying for God's comfort to loved ones who remain?

January-land

Time rushes through you like blue ribbon unfurled

Your field blooms white, spiked with sparse, spectral tree

A moonlit night strung twixt reality

And hunger’s Barmecidal Other World

You are a feather that wafts hither-yon

Soft as the snowflake on guttural gale

Leaving no footprints you wander the pale

Ghost-colored gardens of sepulchral dawn

You gild earth’s coat with heaven’s falling stars

Your laughter sparkles and covers her girth

With diamonds and broken glass slippers; your mirth

Runs over silent, soldered river-bars

Quietness quivers, your fingers incite

Shivers, strain from a beggar’s violin

Steals our breath like ice-kisses on skin

Cold Casanova, you vex yet delight

…where Time rushes through you; a wild blue strand

Borne on the breath of a white afternoon

 Glimmering heath beneath gold wreath of moon

Blustering ballad, January-land

© Janet Martin

  Can you believe it?! 

There are only ten more days left of the first month of 2016!

Didn't we just do this?!

The Poetry of Time

I have a folder of Barry Hopkins articles clipped from The Wellington Advertiser. 

He is a wise observer of man and beast, sky and sod...

Upon a canvas made of years

Life pens verses; love’s smiles, hurt’s tears

Where page-on-page its haste endears

With numerals, each flitting bit

And looking back we come to see

How precious is the brevity

Of what we hold and then set free

To be the memory of it

Upon a stack of ills, bills, thrills

Black ink of night musters refills

Of morning light that brightly spills

Then drains into dusk-blue cajole

As youth learns truth; how we entrust

Our dream to time’s ultimate; dust

And yet it bears a sacred Must

Because this dust harbours a soul

Upon time’s give and taking ways

We scrawl as rise and falling days

Dawn clear then fade to distant haze

Where we gaze, amazed at the rhyme

Of clock-chimes tolling hour on hour

They break the bud and shake the flow’r

Back to the earth to birth spring’s bow’r

We call the poetry of Time

© Janet Martin

Forethought to Retrospect

When morning pours through Mercy’s doors

And bathes the dark in waves of gold

As the scepter of daily wars

Is firmly placed into our hold

Where a new tint in Time has dawned

Tell me then,
How will we respond?

When what we had is laid to rest

And we are left with what remains

Where what we have renders its quest

Before it slips to Bygone plains

Never to vex or tease the eye

Tell me then,
How will we reply?

When what across yon shore breaks free

And what we newly see takes shape

As it flows into history

Where only echoes can escape

As breath-by-breath we near death’s pact

Tell me now,
How will we react?

© Janet Martin

 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. 

Matt. 6:34

We should give our best to what is, because

soon what is will be what was!

Future-present-past, a seamless cast

That does not pause