Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Priceless, Precious, Plebeian Prize





Its prize oft sighs through us without much fuss, fame or applause
A moment-metered montage that we almost miss because
Love’s laws are such that touch is a master of common art
And humble handiwork showcased in halls of human heart

How hardly we have held It, then Today fades from time’s tray
To join its predecessors in the land of Yesterday
And all the artists of the world cannot return its vim
Nor claim the prize of it after the size of it grows dim

Happy is he or she who has begun to realize
The camouflaged appraisal of this ordinary prize
That easily we overlook if we dismiss the keel
Of day-to-day routine and mien of plebeian appeal

…but in the come and go, ebb-flow of morning to nightfall
Life renders to its spenders a prize fitted for us all
Fashioned by sighs and smiles, rationed in duty, love and strife
It unfolds through Awareness of the beauty of this; life

© Janet Martin


O-o-o and A-a-h-some





The glory of Creation’s law
Through countless ages thrills
New generations stand in awe
At what ‘let there be spills



Across the dross of winter-spent
The song of spring extols
God’s faithfulness; time’s testament
Of hope rekindles souls


On hollow and hillside He drapes
A lush and lavish sheen
As majesty of mercy shapes
Grand-scapes of fresh-spun green


Nothing escapes His gaze
How kind this Sovereign Keeper is
How beyond man, His ways


His way instills each bud with blooms
It ordains seeds to hold
A harvest-song within the looms
The weave earth’s green and gold


The glory of the Lord above
Lavishes lands beneath
Benevolence imbues its love
Infusing dormant heath


Across the wake of winter lies
Spring’s promised promenade
The spectator worships with eyes
Glad for all God has made

© Janet Martin

The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof...Ps.24:1

Monday, May 2, 2016

May-song...




May lends lovely reasons
To sing songs of praise
Wringing from time’s seasons
Nature’s greenest days

May is like a flower
Garden in a bud
Born of April’s shower
And meadows of mud

May is a grand belfry
From it laughter tolls
Children prancing freely
Like spring’s newborn foals

May rolls, soft and airy
Like a tumbleweed
‘cross an azure prairie
Spilling blossom-seed

May is like a poem
Sun-spun lilt and rhyme
Troubadour exalting
Nature’s greenest time

© Janet Martin


All But The Precious Now




My, we are pressed for time, a constant climb
Always from where we were to where we are
The rubric of its tick-tock pantomime
Drains eons into Bygone’s phantom bar
Where, where we are is quite enough, it seems
To keep us pressed for time, the breath of years
A canopy of quandary and dreams
Pressed to a page of day that disappears
Into a season-salted tide; we sail
Pressed hard by time and its transient travail

Heave-ho and off we go, dawn drains night’s deep
A sea of opportunity expands
And envelopes dreamlands still half-asleep
With what time presses into ancient sands
The Very Thing that Is and none can stay
Like leaf that breaks the bud that cannot bind
The Ordinance of nature’s seamless sway
A little bloom soon scattered where the grind
Of what remains tramples beneath its feet
All but the echo of love’s bitter-sweet

Subtle, time’s meeting-greeting silhouette
Presses to hour-passage the design
Of that which we cannot quite picture yet
Like buds dangling unopened on a vine
Where, where we are unfolds to where we were
And a new where-we-are commands our stare
Time’s presses do not pause, winter-summer
A  kaleidoscope of hope and care
And prayer, for where we are, pressed by a wave
That leads us through the doorway of the grave

A penny for your thoughts, make it a dime
What do you think of this pink-blue applause
That wraps itself in gauze shimmers called Time
While, all the while turning our Is to Was?
Aha, aha, we say, then change our view
The green of youth jaded, a faded flow’r
And what we vowed we never would, we do
Because no one can override the pow’r
Where hour plays no favorites, its caress
A constant harvesting into Time’s press

Small graces fill faces with wonder, oh,
What is man that we are privy to this
Arrangement of moments that ebb and flow
Onward, forward toward what Was from Is
Hello, farewell, such sacred Tenderness
Addresses smile and tear; a quickened quaff
Of common firsts and lasts, they coalesce
Creating masterpieces we call Love
Where Time presses and winnows from our hold
All but the precious Now that soon runs cold


The climax on this countdown of life’s clock
Will stop us in our tracks; come, live, laugh, love
Enjoy the courtesy of ticks and tocks
That soon unlocks thought’s tender treasure trove
Of days gone by…a sigh on trembling lips
Where even Now we cannot long lament
The Constant of ephemeral fellowships
Lest we indulge the heart with discontent
For we, though pressed for and by time admit
We barely grasp the gifted gasp of it


© Janet Martin


Happy 18th Birthday, Matt!