Holes Beyond Mending...

PAD Challenge day 8: For today’s prompt, write a family poem.
The first thing that comes to our thoughts this morning with the word 'family'
is all the families in mourning over loss of loved ones.
A nation mourns with them

 

We mourn

Hearts torn

By kindred grief

For those who weep but cannot find

For comfort, hope

For tears, relief

For agony,

Sweet peace of mind

We look

And love

With meeker heart

When comes The Parting; who can tell?

When fabric of

Life’s live-

laugh-love

Leaves a big hole nothing can fill

We pray

The grace

And love of God

To bind the wounds too deep for word

As voice

Form, touch

Of one beloved

Will nevermore be felt, seen, heard

We think;

Ah death,

You stir each breath

With awareness of What Comes Next

The thread

Betwixt

What Then and This

May sever when we least expect

© Janet Martin

Ps.147:3

 He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.

 Psalm 145:18
The LORD is near to all who call upon Him, To all who call upon Him in truth.

Ps.34:18
The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

April Snow #2 or April Angel

Earth will not suffer long, my love

Her filigree of ice

Will fall prey to a song, my love

Of April’s avarice

A glutton for green joy-oh-joy

And plumage, purple-gold

She gathers frigid ‘boy-oh-boy’

Into a Story Told

And waltzes like a woman, oh

Too long of sun bereft

Across the dormant garden, oh

With magic in each step

…to dance a dueling promenade

Caught between March and May

An ebb-and-flow of Hope Betrayed

And laughter’s gladdest play

For she is April’s Angel-Queen

She melts forbidden snow

And spins a winsome world of green

From winter’s overflow

And where Her white wing-feathers fell

A yellow halo spills

To waken in the dryad's dell

The first spring-peeper trills

© Janet Martin

April Snow...

To we, weary of April's snow, a bitty-ditty of hope!

 

The fickle ways of winter’s end and spring’s beginning tests

The hearts of summer-lovers with the art of winter’s best

When March gives way to April, hope dons robes of mist-green fold

Her dreams are kissed by honeyed breeze, her cheeks with ether gold

The white that stirred delight and drew us to December’s hearth

Authors lament; snow’s boreal bestowal stunts rebirth

The mirth of muted minstrels waits within each eager plume

For bud-gates to fling open to the anthems of first bloom

While we, beneath the hierarchy of April’s fickleness

Have no choice but suffer long both tantrum and caress

Buoyed by the assurance ‘there will come a glorious day’

When winter’s cell door reverberates with Spring’s hip-hip-hooray

© Janet Martin

 above words..L.M. Montgomery

Augusta, Georgia, The Masters

PAD Challenge day 7: For today’s prompt, write a senses poem. 

That is, write a poem that uses one or more of your senses. 

Smell, taste, touch, sound, sight, or even a sixth sense. 

Focus in on one of them or try to incorporate them all.

For me the Masters
is a treat to all the senses but esp. sight and sound!
 

Some come to watch the challenge

Some love the wholesome scenes

Of ancient tree-lined bowers

And gentle rolling greens

Of full-blooming azaleas

Pink dogwood, flowering peach

Of jasmine and magnolia

Majestic fir and beech

Here hope and disappointment

Mete out their rivalry

Where stood  The Eisenhower Pine

And still, the Big Oak Tree

Hearts soar with each white orb lobbed high

Rush of adrenaline

Mingles with azure of pure sky

Splash…and temper’s discipline

As dreams are lived and broken

Midst reverent applause

Where man is at the mercy

Of golf’s merciless laws

Par, birdie, bogey, breath-prayer

‘Dear God, Thy will be done

But I could use a miracle

How ‘bout a hole-in-one?'

April’s bite of earth-heaven

Augusta’s glory-days

While dusk draws steeple shadows

While soft, the music plays

© Janet Martin

 

Jim and I may have different reasons for watching but...we both love it. lol;-)

 Augusta; excerpt below from this article

What makes Augusta unique is all the different types of trees and flowering shrubs that are in bloom when the Masters takes place. The 366-acre property was in the 1800s home to Fruitland Nurseries. It was then that so many different trees and plants were imported and planted there, brought from around the globe. Even when the nursery closed in 1918, the trees and plants remained and thrived until Bobby Jones discovered the property in the early 1930s.
So, when the course was designed and landscaped, it was done so around this arbor spectacular more than perhaps any course in the world. Named trees dot the course. There’s a 150-year-old specimen simply known as “The Big Oak” that stands majestically near the clubhouse. Then, there’s the Eisenhower Pine on No. 17, so named because the 34th President Dwight Eisenhower who often played the course managed to hit it so often with his tee shots.
In fact, all of the holes are named after exotic and aromatic trees such as Tea Olive (No. 1), Pink Dogwood (No. 2), Flowering Crab Apple (No. 4), Magnolia (No. 5), Yellow Jasmine (No. 8), Carolina Cherry (No. 9), Azalea (No. 13), Nandina (No. 17) and so on.
Said Nese: “The thing that strikes me is that Augusta takes so much pride in its trees and flowers and shrubs that it names its holes after them. When I think of Augusta National, that’s what I think of first — all those different growing things and their beauty.

The highs, like no other golf tournament... (Masters 2015)

as well as the lows!!(Masters 2016)

  Jordan Spieth, gracious in defeat! Remember?

Wishing all the best to each player!
Thank-you.

Of Footholds and Foundation

This poem was inspired by thinking of/praying for 
many family, friends, neighbors and acquaintances 

suffering seriously difficult times; injury, sickness, pain, loss of loved ones etc..

When faith needs to find fresh footholds

And hope needs a big hug or three

As love learns how to suffer long

And cheer learns a meek melody

…and when the heaviness of heart

Must bear the heaviness of life

And groan beneath a weight enlarged

By pain and parting’s sorrow-strife

When plan and routine run awry

And Unknown looms like blackest night

In mortal weakness God is strong

In Unknown’s darkness He is Light

© Janet Martin

 When you pass through the waters,
    I will be with you;

Isa.43:2

"My Dad Doesn't Read The Newspaper!" or Some Things Never Change

"Think!" said the young man teaching the grades 1-6 Sunday School classes this past Sunday.

He was trying to get them to remember the word 'gospel' means Good News!

As a clue he asked 'what does your dad read in the morning with his coffee?

no answer.

"news..." he hints

no answer.

"The newspaper, right?"

One little boy in my class shook his head

(looking up at me with eyes so big and brown one could get lost in them) 

and whispered loudly, "My dad doesn't read the newspaper. He reads his Bible!"

All the other little boys whispered "my dad doesn't read the newspaper!"

I'm guessing the news is likely read on smaller less intrusive or visible devices.

(Also, it made me wonder how many families still sit down together for breakfast in the morning!) 

Ah, changing times...like far less newspapers being sold or read!...or Bibles?

One thing that does not change is children...

they still come into the world as pure and innocent as ever!

(Perfect in crooked ponytails and week-old Dominican-vacation braids;-))

Yesterday I listened to these two girls chat as they strung 'seeds'

 (One little girl simply couldn't remember they were beads, not seeds;-)

Comparing and discussing life one girl (daughter of a multi-million$ farm operation) said to the other "well, I guess someone just gave us this farm and now all we have is chores!

 cow-chores, chicken-chores, calf-chores, cat-chores and Clifford-chores (Clifford is their new puppy) 

It's SO bohing(boring) we don't get to watch anything, not even a pretend TV!! 

She, a through and through farm girl is out with her daddy chasing cattle, kicking and whooping with the best of them and loves it...doesn't know she's living a bit of heaven on earth 

or that someone did not 'just give' the farm to them, 

but children are free and unhindered as yet with 'the ties that bind dads and moms to the grindstone!'

Children, so innocent, so dependent on us!!

...to teach, train, instruct as they absorb their surroundings!

Oh, bitty best perfection

Oh, pretty girl and boy

You steal our best affection 

and rouse our deepest joy

Oh, mommy, daddy, listen

This bitty blur of bliss

That grants glimpses of heaven

Is more than hug and kiss

It is a commandeering 

Toward a Certain Goal 

A vital,

faithful,

gentle 

leading

Of body bearing soul

Janet~