How About Now?

Click on collage, then right-click on view image to enlarge and re-live the memories:)

Looking back for all its lessons

Cannot, will not alter Now

Live and learning’s effervescence

Runs through Present's curtsy-bow

Wish and wanting does no planting

Looking does not push the plow

We can only work, my darling

With all we ever have; Now

Time, for all our bellyaching

Balances its Where-When-How

Always giving, with its taking

A new and unbroken Now

© Janet Martin

...so dear Bluejays, though Now may seem bittersweet we say Thank-you!
 for giving us post-season pleasure two years in a row.
What fun it was!
See you in the spring.

Always on the Fringe...

 Autumn grandstands wave wildly while waning hillside Hurrahs

Already winds of change are draining its gaudy applause

From Anne of Ingleside

The aptitude and fortitude and solitude of Past

Is like a landscape after summer’s blooming cape is cast

Aside; the tide of tick and tock, with unrelenting force

Dominates earth and all therein subject to its discourse

…and nothing can evade the Thing that seasons Seasons, oh,

The Past is like an echo-land brindled with letting go

Where we are ever on the fringe of it but never There

Though always moments in our grip slip to its thoroughfare

…while we grapple to learn to love what Present deems our lot

Then twilight takes and tenders to the trove of Afterthought

And we, betrothed it seems, to Becoming, cannot afford

To stand too long and gaze at vistas that once we adored

…or else we miss The Very Thing that waits to splash its ilk

In gray and gold upon the ether Hold of molded silk

Where aptitude and fortitude and solitude of Yore

Is always on the fringe of what we touch and where we are

© Janet Martin

 Here are the thoughts leading up to Anne's summation...

Two Rispettos or One Autumn Poem Entitled Silk-Thread Toll

Today Poetic Bloomings invites us to a write a Rispetto.

A Rispetto, an Italian form of poetry, (Italian:: “respect,” – plural rispetti, a Tuscan folk verse form) is a complete poem of two rhyme quatrains. The meter is usually iambic tetrameter with a rhyme scheme of abab ccdd. A Heroic Rispetto is written in Iambic pentameter, usually featuring the same rhyme scheme.

Fretwork of farmer’s field is felled

And fruit from laden leaf-looms culled

Spring’s framework to filled fathoms meld

Bud-promises plucked, pulled and hulled

Mist-trysts on frost-kissed climes amass

Like gilded glints of shattered glass

As glitter of forgotten wars

Bedecks earth’s heath in breath-wreathed stars

***

Time’s rubric is resolute, fixed

Season-ilk spirals, silk-thread toll

Of Birth, then death; a life betwixt

Its quantum woven through with Soul

Nothing new waits where Now, newborn

Baits gated brogue of morrow’s morn

Where wonder-lust and laughter-tears

Stirs soldered dust of yesteryears

© Janet Martin

Another Chance!

Today dawned like a black and white postcard...

 ...until the sun broke through its mist-mantled bar...

 ...and washed the world with gold!

Another day to find a way

To make the best of where we are

As from the place of hope and grace

God wills light from His mercy-jar

Another dawn to build upon

And do the best with what we have

Before the Hand of due demand

Writes twilight's tender epitaph

Another chance as dark recants

To be the best that we can be

Not for acclaim of fleeting fame

But in thankful humility

Another day to sing and pray

And love always, our fellowman

As God’s love grants another chance

To make-do-be the best we can

© Janet Martin

 Colossians 3:23
Whatever you do, work at it with your whole being, for the Lord and not for men,

Leaf By Leaf...

above lines from the poem To Autumn by John Keats

(one of my all-time favs:)

Along the boulevards, on hills

Like day-beacons, the trees

Beam bright with lights red-gold until

The stilling of the leas

As leaf by leaf each lamp is snuffed

And sheaf by sheaf earth's lintels doffed

The tempo of those songs we love

On summer's shaded shore

Wanes note by note into a trove

Of mauve and misted moor

As leaf by leaf the Maestro dims

The choristers of autumn's hymns 

How hardly we had held its hour

So, looking back it seems

Before the hello of its flow'r

Fell prey to moment-schemes

And leaf by leaf life's lissom bent

Mingled with pith of seasons spent

The unveiling of timber-frames

Is like a splurge of sorts

While wind-hooligans play their games

And nameless imps cavort

Soft, leaf by leaf their romp and play

Brushes the blooms of fall away

© Janet Martin

Something More Than Nothing...

When someone stops doing nothing and just starts doing something, anything — this is what starts to change everything.

A Holy Experience

But what can we do?!

Help Haitians Here 
To rebuild a school in Haiti lost in Hurricane Matthew costs approx. $15,000. 
(That means if 150 people donate 100.00, or 300 donate $50.00 they can rebuild!!!)
Help Syrian Refugees Here 
Help your local Food Bank Here 
Help the Suffering in South Sudan Here
Help Someone, 
Somewhere 

Lord, let us love
Our fellowman
By giving more
Than we think we can

...and let Your voice 
Of mercy be
Our prayerful,
Radical
Generosity 


© Janet Martin

Radical thankfulness
+
Radical Faith
=
Radical Generosity