These Are Flower-Hours...

These are flower hours

Don’t forget to pause

Lingering in bowers

Of nature’s applause

These are flower hours

May, June and July

Spill in lily-laughter

Thrilling every eye

These are flower-hours

Slow thy hastening

Lest we miss the best of

Nature’s offering

These are flower-hours

How we miss them so

While the winter showers

Earth with ice and snow

These are flowers hours

Mercy’s autograph

Spills to hills and gardens

Listen to earth laugh

These are flower hours

Mother, still thy sigh

Flowers are like children

Poised upon good-bye

© Janet Martin

On Blooming Where We're Planted

 Life is a blend of oohs and aahs and blues and blahs

Bloom where you’re planted

Don’t be disenchanted

By what God has granted

Whether gold or gray

The boon of an hour

Is like a noon shower

Or bud swooned to flower

Soon withered away

Time is a garden

Live, laugh, love, my darlin’

For we do not know when

Our last bloom will fade

And all that will linger

Of summer and winter

Are tender-sweet whispers

Of memories made

So bloom where you’re planted

And don’t take for-granted

The everyday banter

Of duty-bent trust

For soft slips the season

Its rhyme and its reason

A vexing profusion

Of diamonds and dust

© Janet Martin

Of Circumstance and Response...

This is the day the Lord has made. 

We will rejoice and be glad in it. 

Ps.118:24

So oft where moments move and glance

We cannot choose their circumstance

The only thing we can control

Is our response to Time’s cajole

Then pray we choose to use this day

Regardless of its come-what-may

Not like a lovely gift ignored

But to the glory of the Lord

From heaven’s shores to our embrace

Mercy’s implores and renders grace

The What of it, no one can tell

But all can choose to use it well

Then when dawn’s lustrous lantern sets

And this new day to Past begets

No better thought can make us glad

Than this; we gave the best we had

© Janet Martin

To He or She...There Are But These...a repost with a message link on How Many Genders Are There?

I'm re-posting this poem from Saturday because it ties in so well with the message we heard yesterday at our church.

How Many Genders Are There? a message from WBC


 

To he or she (there are but these)

Made male and female by the One

Who holds the drop of earth in space

And orders the path of the sun

To he or she who would deny,

While bloom still blooms and day still breaks

The One whose footstool is the sky

And Gives while mankind takes and takes

To he or she who has not known
 And therefore does not understand

The Presence of God on His throne

Is Essence in the soul of man

To he or she of unbelief
 And blinded by their eyes and ears

Knowledge is but a bitter grief

There is no comfort for their fears

To he or she that thinks that we

Live but from cradle to the grave

Ah, fall upon your knees and weep

To He who is mighty to save

To he or she who laughs at He

Who loves them, loved them unto death

Oh, pity their eternity

And pray for them while they have breath

To he or she who trusts in God

The One True God in full control

Do not despair, liar and fraud

Cannot, will not escape The Soul

© Janet Martin

  "LORD, there is no one like you to help the powerless against the mighty. Help us, LORD our God, for we rely on you, and in your name we have come against this vast army. LORD, you are our God; do not let mere mortals prevail against you."

2 Chron.14:11

May Days...

Yesterday we were reminded that winter still hovers in the fringes, but today May returns to more seasonal form.

The trees wear green, lace dresses

The breeze, a satin shawl

The gleaming hill caresses

Blue-heaven madrigals

The brook, a laughing love-song

Each nook and dell a plot

Where lolls the daffodil with

Blue-eyed forget-me-not

Dawn is a golden posy

Noon is a butterfly

Dusk lingers, lush and rosy

Where violet vespers sigh

Hope finds orchard-havens

Clothes the scraggly limb

With the blush of blossoms

Yonder woodlands brim

…with nature’s gladdest singing

As praise to heaven rings

For the kind refurbishing

Of earth’s long-hidden springs

© Janet Martin

The Oh-Zone

Poetic Bloomings is asking us to share our writing 'comfort zone'.

(Right now I do 90% of my writing here in the morning)

Windows facing north and east

Coffee poured, a poet’s feast

Oh, the lovely countryside

As dark yields to morning-tide

Turn computer on, here goes

What will be? Nobody knows

Close my eyes, grit versus grace

Shift my chair…type…hit back-space

Lend the will of word to jot

Befriend the venture of thought

Where and how and why, oh my

Troll the deep and touch the sky

Startle the page with a prayer

Grapple with hope and despair

“Tock” says clock and “Ach”, says I

How a poet’s hours fly!

Want and will and whispers war

Taunt and thrill and groan implore

Vexation and pleasure vie

Dawn expands and fills the sky

Fear and courage interlace

Oh, the bliss of grit and grace

Shift my chair…type…don’t delete

Task and tsk-tsk-tsk compete

© Janet Martin