A World of Common Ways

'So Long Ago' and 'Right Now' share a world of common ways

Morning is grafted like an offshoot to Past’s weathered bough

Bud bursts, bears fruit; we brim with hymns of thanksgiving and praise

While tromping over shriveled remnants of hulled moment-snow

Even after these many years much appears to amaze

Ah, we are often stripped of speech as we stand still and gape

Across the sweep of Mercy’s Keep keened seasons spill their trays

Earth swallows up its crumbs where thrums of new summer take shape

The ways of grace are tattooed on earth’s minute spurt of dust

God keeps His word; and we are stirred to awe and Holy fear

The sun shines and the rain falls; all that we can do is trust

In spite of what we see and what They say… God is still here

Thus, Long Ago and Right Now are bound by what matters most

Not boast of stuff, but Love lavished as freely now as then

For God so loves the world today as He did at The First

…and thus He waits to seal Time’s gates with His final Amen

© Janet Martin

 A few shots from my rural, local Thanksgiving drive/bike.

Morning Madrigal

The trees are sketched against the stretching sky in raven ink

We wake and stretch and do not know what this new 'Go' betides

Before we touch our feet down on time’s runway we should think

About the One who knows; then pray to He whose love abides

The landscape meets the skyline; we can never reach that place

Where earth and heaven meld into a mystic blue and mauve

Onward, upward, we stumble on time’s steppingstones of grace

Across crag and quagmire shod with God’s unfailing love

The leaf of autumn lingers for a little then it falls

The dust of daydreams teaches us what words can never spell

Soul-surges of surrender shape time’s tender madrigals

Where man and land have much in common; God’s love fills its shell

The birth and death of morn-noon-night begets Bygone’s attire

We should give earnest heed to deeds; they never fully dim

This little slip of season-silk that weaves Time will expire

Where God’s kind love and mercy tunes the Tide that leads to Him

© Janet Martin 

It's a beaut of a morning here! 

Enjoy its bouquet of colored leaves garnished with sun...

For Players in the Game of Baseball or Life

Matt enjoyed a never-forget-it-as-long-as-I-live night at the Sky-dome to watch the Blue-jays try to sweep the series against the Texas Rangers.

He said there was a consistent eager hum of excitement in the crowd,

but when Donaldson slid across the home-plate clinching the extra-innings win the place erupted into a beyond-words noise-level of celebration! 

Sometimes in life's

Swing and miss, 

slip, trip and sprawl

Fumble a pop-fly, 

or 

get hit by a ball

...sometimes in life's 

extra innings 

before loss

Or new-season beginnings

after 

a bat-toss 

...sometimes in life's 

hurt and dirt

Had a bad day

Bases-loaded 

grounder

then a double play

Sometimes in life's game of

Hope, hit, 

work hard, 

fall

We meet with moments 

that make it

Worth it all

© Janet Martin

September fears have turned to October cheers! 

October's First-frost Morning

Is there anything fairer than a zinnia dipped in stars

Or blades of grass bedecked in glass drizzled from heaven-jars

There is no upper-lower class when nature dons the robe

Of first-frost morning as it gilds the hemline of the globe

Lo and behold, the world is silver-gold with fragile sheaf

Where diamonds by the billion garnish lowly sprig and leaf

Dawn is a crystal temple, we the worshipers that bow

Beneath the Lordship of a love that lavishes earth’s prow

Soon the boon of new morning will melt fall's svelte sheen of frost

A picture of time’s taking to which everything is lost

But in this course of moment-force heaven unveils its bars

In autumn-first-frost-mornings when God dazzles earth with stars

© Janet Martin

Becoming Intimate With Father Time...

No, no amount of willpower will keep his kiss at bay

In Time, his silver starlet chaplet halos dreams of May

As scarlet undertow of come and go tinsels the trees

And petals fall like rainbow snow on summer’s plundered leas

Oft we forget the pirouette of moments; soft they splay

Then etch a silhouette of ether worlds on yesterday

In surreal outlines of a shrine which only thought can see

Ah, Father Time, you are a mime of tick-by-tock melee

The buttered side of bread, when we are fed leaves no reward

You strip the ‘buttered-side’ of us as seasons are out-poured

…and no one is immune to autumn’s swoon of brooding hue

Aha, aha we say, then gulp its noon of gray-gold-blue

Do you remember, dear, when we thought Here was long and slow

And we were anxious to vanquish the miles we had to go?

When did we start to feel the tug-of-heart where hunger wars?

As After envelopes the laughter of younger Befores

The quiet conquering of ages stages quite a show

The more we learn of love and life it seems, the less we know

So we content ourselves with living moments and not years

For one thing Time has taught us is how slick he disappears

© Janet Martin