Gladdest Certainty

Hark, chimes of gladdest Certainty

Toll through Time’s groan of care

Yet ages, like a rolling sea

Cannot man's Hope despair

The power of an hour takes

And gives in sleek alloy

The flower of its bower breaks

In both sorrow and joy

While hope unadulterated

In ageless Pureness beams

The dark cannot overtake it

Or mute what grace esteems

Where chimes of gladdest Certainty

Calms fear’s calamity

God WAS, IS and WILL EVER BE

The love that sets us free

© Janet Martin

 This is love: not that we loved God, 

but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

1 John 4:10

Sometimes, (esp. this week in the aftermath of the American election, the fever thereof having trickled over the border into Canada) when hateful things are said, I’m inclined to believe it is not hate but fear that drives awful words from the tongue.

Tell me, please, after all the Remembering ceremonies of yesterday, how can we bear to nurture anything but love?

Time is short.

We need each other.

Every one of us.

November

 PAD Challenge day 12:for today’s prompt, pick a month (any month), make it the title of your poem, and then, write your poem.

Stark and dark, its still-life poses

Like a thorn bush stripped of roses

Like a painting, bitter-sweet

Summer trampled ‘neath time’s feet

Lithesome youth from green tree shaken

Timeless truth, never mistaken

Nature, stripped down to its bones

Clings to tempered monotones

Sings a lonesome lullaby

In dead leaves cartwheeling by

© Janet Martin

Show-stopper

While making supper...

 The world outside the window disappears

November blue deepens its hue

Until earth slips away

It drapes a shroud of lowered cloud

Across the dying day

The barrenness of stricken tress

The poet’s heart endears

The sallow hill and hollow rill

Are swallowed up in years

And where the world by noon unfurled

A superlative view

Dusk steals the show, soft, subtle, slow

With blue on blue on blue

© Janet Martin

The Awful, Awful Cost of War

PAD Challenge day 11:
For today’s prompt, write a description poem.
Pick someone or something to describe.
Get in depth, or just brush along the surface.


So our young men and women can go off to work...

and come home to mother's supper-soup...

Beneath your ribs

Pulses the heart

Of a boy,
A brother,

A mother’s son

But, instead of

A baseball bat

They are teaching you

How to hold a gun

And on your cheek,

Your smooth, young cheek

Instead of a kiss

From a sweetheart dear

You are about

To taste firsthand

The awful gall

Of mud-and-blood tear

And many of you

Will never see

The Freedom

You are fighting for

Your boyish vim and

Sympathy

The awful, awful

Cost of war

© Janet Martin

The Truth
by
Archibald Lampman

Remembering...

 It is Remembrance Day in Canada,
Veteran's Day in the USA

(Today we say our thank-yous
...each day may we live our Thank-yous)

Sometimes I forget

… I butter bread

And fill my head

With dreams and such

While offspring of

A soldier’s love

Makes uncommon,

Life’s common touch

…how those who fell

Loved, oh so well

The life of morrow’s

Girl and boy

And how the cost

Of what they lost

Pays for the freedom

We enjoy

*** 

Sometimes I forget

… I butter bread

And fill my head

With dreams and such

While offspring of

A Saviour’s love

Makes uncommon,

Life’s common touch

His blood-drops fell

To save from hell

The soul whose life

Will never cease

He bore the price

Of sacrifice

To pay for freedom

We call Peace

© Janet Martin


Easy Service by Edgar A. Guest

When an empty sleeve or a sightless eye
Or a legless form I see,
I breathe my thanks to my God on High
For His watchful care o'er me.
And I say to myself, as the cripple goes
Half stumbling on his way:
I may brag and boast, but that brother knows
Why the old flag floats to-day.

I think as I sit in my cozy den
Puffing one of my many pipes
That I've served with all of my fellow men
The glorious Stars and Stripes.
Then I see a troop in the faded blue
And a few in the dusty gray,
And I have to laugh at the deeds I do
For the flag that floats to-day.

I see men tangled in pointed wire,
The sport of the blazing sun,
Mangled and maimed by a leaden fire
As the tides of battle run,
And I fancy I hear their piteous calls
For merciful death, and then
The cannons cease and the darkness falls,
And those fluttering things are men.

Out there in the night they beg for death,
Yet the Reaper spurns their cries,
And it seems his jest to leave them breath
For their pitiful pleas and sighs.
And I am here in my cosy room
In touch with the joys of life,
I am miles away from the fields of doom
And the gory scenes of strife.

I never have vainly called for aid,
Nor suffered real pangs of thirst,
I have marched with life in its best parade
And never have seen its worst.
In the flowers of ease I have ever basked,
And I think as the Flag I see
How much of service from some it's asked,
How little of toil from me.

Edgar Albert Guest