Learning to Love

Try as we may, love

Try as we might, 

I know we will never

Get this whole love-thing right 

Still…

This cage of skin

With its fumbling and fight

Its mumbling and might

Its stumbling insight

Holds a voracious

Love-appetite

So, 

In love's give and take

We won't give up or in

But take each new day

As love's try, try again

© Janet Martin

Hallelujah Medley

 click, click, went the camera shutter in an attempt to capture earth's hallelujah song...

All the earth bows down to you; they sing praise to you, they sing the praises of your name."
Ps.66:4

Hallelujah sings dusk’s heaven

Hallelujah, laughs the lad

Splashing through blue sky beneath him

Hallelujah, grins his dad

Hallelujah, cheeps the sparrow

Hallelujah sweeps yon mead

Where the color-schemes of vesper

Run askew in pink-gold-red

Hallelujah, shouts the hour

Green with possibility

Hallelujah, prays the mother

…God holds what she cannot see

Hallelujah, raves the river

Rushing yet not running dry

Hallelujah, sighs the lover

Reaching for a dream-dazed sky

Hallelujah, beams the flower

Hallelujah streams the sun

Strumming springtime’s slumbr’ing bower

With hope’s hallelujah-song

Hallelujah, cheers the morning

Hallelujah rings through trees

Hallelujah joins the heart who

Knows that God arranges these

© Janet Martin

An Analysis on The Order of Things...

At the end of daylight we find nightfall

At the end of nightfall, new day

Then, as the end of an hour evolves

We find another, hooray!

At the end of a bud we find flowers

At the end of its bloom, a pod

Then at the end of its emptying

We find fresh seed in earth’s sod

At the end of childhood we find Duty

At the end of Duty, we rest

Then, at the end of rest’s slumber we find

The return to Duty’s quest

At the end of self-will we find wanting

At the end of self’s want, pride’s laud

Then, at the end of pride’s self at last

We are prepared to find God

© Janet Martin

As Surely As Sparks Fly Upward...

Happy Feb. 1st!

Yet man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward.

Job 5:7

Troubled by sorrows that fetter our gaze

Buoyed by hope of morrow’s better days

Weakness and strength juxtapose ‘neath our skin

For where one ends the other will begin

One born of faith and the other of fear

Heart-wars beheld by One Wise Overseer

Ah, here is comfort, both Solace and Rod

Grappling with guesses while clinging to God

Up from the skyline a new day adheres

(Not to fate, for Divine God commandeers)

But to extensions of His saving grace

Kind intervention of Light bleeds through space

Where we, in likeness of His image made

Return to suffer the tools of love’s trade

Second mile servicemen breaking Time’s sod

Dying to self so we can live for God

We cannot know the synopsis of ‘why’?

Only, ‘there is more than what meets the eye’

Action and consequence ever deploy

Intimate heartbreak or outburst of joy

Here on time’s battle-ground, warriors we

Bearing the weapons that bind or set free

Leaning or leaping, wake-sleeping we plod

Where Love lays stepping-stones leading to God

© Janet Martin

Poetry by God

God writes his poetry on sky and sea

He scrawls on halls of green with amethyst

Or on a lily’s upturned face, dew-kissed

Or in the weeping sigh of willow tree

God’s poetry drips where rain-minstrels sing

From russet autumn afternoon, the fell

Afire with a dying day’s farewell

It murmurs in a brook’s meandering

It broods in blue of winter dusk, in hues

Of lavender, blush, bronze, a flower-storm

Splashed on a hill, his wordless poems charm

The troubadour that pen and ink pursues

God spills His poetry freely to us

The sky, the land and sea proclaim it thus

© Janet Martin

Through God' poetry we catch a glimpse of who He is...

 All the earth will worship You, And will sing praises to You; 

They will sing praises to Your name." Selah.  

Come and see the works of God, 

Who is awesome in His deeds toward the sons of men.

Ps.66:4-5 

Wishing you a worship-full day!