No Jesus, No Joy...

Without kindness

Or compassion

Or remorse

Or forgiveness

Or sacrifice

Of putting others first

Dear boy

There is no fulfillment

No contentment

No peace of mind

No true happiness

No Jesus

No joy

© Janet Martin

Beloved, let us love one another, because love comes from God. 

Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

This is how God’s love was revealed among us: 

God sent His one and only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him.

And love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us 

and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, 

God remains in us, and His love is perfected in us.

By this we know that we remain in Him, and He in us: He has given us of His Spirit.

And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world.

If anyone confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God

 And we have come to know and believe the love that God has for us. 

God is love; whoever abides in love abides in God, and God in him. 

1 John 4:7-16

Tick-tock Tide

  Loved watching the ebb and flow of the tide when we were in the Maritimes this fall...

(this poem is of a slightly different tide inspired by a gray November day)

It claws at skin-veiled appetence and seeps out in each breath

It wars where confidence and creed collect hallmarks of death

And ushers in the harvest where the seeds of hunger fell

It startles us with colours tinting contrails of farewell

As soft and sound it severs what is bound beyond our clutch

And swings its pendulum of air through thoroughfares of touch

But siphons, in so doing life’s vaporous repertoire

Inexorable wooing, like the wind through leafless spire

The rhythm of time’s metronome composes common ground

Tick-tock, tick-tock, its airborne clock like a merry-go-round

Where we, aboard a carousel of fare-thee-well and thrill

Are bound by Simply Being to its four-season quadrille

To marvel at the intricacy of the bud, to mourn

How swift its petals strew the mud in madrigals forlorn

And how the gift of now keeps turning in the Thing we prize

To startle us with echoes from the dust of its demise

November knights the embers of autumn with stars of snow

It tugs at noble hearts with pangs begot by letting go

And kindles from the ashes of love’s potent passion spent

The comfort of home fires without youth’s heady torment

Where Age wears scars and laugh-lines like badges of honor, earned

Through wars it fought while being taught what those before it learned

While tick-tock tunes a tide of morn-noon-night while seasons roll

To vex vapor-virility with death-anointed toll

© Janet Martin

I Can't Ever Reach To Find You...

 PAD Challenge 23: For today’s prompt, take the phrase “I Can’t (blank),” replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem.

 So much slips from touch so fast...

I can’t ever reach to find you

Soft you waft from dawn to dawn

My clenched fingers cannot bind you

One day here, the next you’re gone

I can’t ever turn to touch you

Save in rendezvous of thought

After you have lent your virtue

After I have spent your lot

I can’t ever have a redo

Once-in-a-lifetime; Today

So I must make the most of you

Before you slip-slip away

I can’t see you save in faces

Places, graces you estrange

God, help me before Thought traces

Everything nothing can change

© Janet Martin

I Can't Seem To Shake Your Whispers...

PAD Challenge 23: For today’s prompt, take the phrase “I Can’t (blank),” replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem.

I can't seem to shake your whispers

Or the urge that they bequeath

Seems that we are bound together

By the very air we breathe

By the thought that begs the reason

By the 'pressing to the goal'

By the turning of the season

And the yearning of the soul

I can't be myself without you

You weave wonder through each mile

There is just something about you

That makes waiting worth its while

Worth the want while glimmers grapple

Worth the hunt while words implore

Worth the re-e-e-aching for the apple

From an almost-poem floor

Janet Martin

 

A 'Praise Him' Poem (and Happy Thanksgiving to our American Friends)

PAD Challenge day 22: For today’s prompt, write a praise poem. 

A poem that has only begun...

There is no end to our WOWZA (see inspiration for this term here)

 when it comes to Praising Him

in whom there is no shadow of turning.

Every good and perfect gift is from above, 

coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, 

who does not change like shifting shadows.

James 1:17

 A few praise-him pics of daybreak...

(This is pick-a-stanza piece if it's a little long-winded for your taste😉)

Praise He who dissolves dark with pastel-pink of morning-tide

Who spreads four-season wonderment across the country-side

Who does not give what we deserve but startles us with grace

In spite of all our wayward wants and worship we misplace

Praise He who woos us with His whisper woven deep within

Who knitted us together with far more than pulse ‘neath skin

Who, though He knew how hard the hurt of human plight might be

Created earth and heaven to showcase His majesty

Praise He who lets us laugh; who helps us through each day to day

Who stuns us with the handiwork of nature on display

(and who can count the marvels that He tips from misted jars

From teeniest of blossoms to the night-sky filled with stars)

...from newborn babe to ripe, old age His favor never fails

From bud to bloom to farewell’s tomb His faithfulness prevails

From folds of green to gold through winter’s cold, storm-tossed terrain

Praise He who keeps his promise; Springtime always comes again

Praise He whose Love will never falter, filled tender plea

The author of salvation and hope for eternity

Who, through His Son won for his own, death’s Great Deliverance

If we believe, and thereby receive faith’s inheritance

Praise He, who convicts us of sin that mars our happiness

For too often we want Him to bless our greediness

But praise Him, all-wise Father who works only for our good

And frustrates mortal grasp with mercies oft misunderstood

Praise He, who comforts us when pain or sorrow metes its Must

And calls us to remember our frames of dust-to-dust

Praise He who stirs within us a most keen and solemn sense

After this life all that remains is Choice’s recompense

Praise He who delights in us like a father in a son

And lavishes His love on us in ways never outdone

For He never forsakes His own but heaps grace over grace

Until we pass through the thin curtain that still veils His face

Praise He who dissolves dark with pastel-pink and golden cheer

Who never skips a season in the quadrille of a year

Who does not give us what we earn but renews mercy’s score

With a new day to learn to trust and pray a little more

Janet Martin~

For Every Day Heroes...

Her 'heroism' details are not mine to tell but this poem inspired by a chat with her, 

is for my friend Sasha and all you other every day heroes!

 I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers...Phil.1:4

This prayer is for you; shouldering hidden hard knocks

And hope’s invisible hills

This prayer is for the warrior

Who battles life’s volley of bills…and more bills

This prayer is for the worker

Torn between home and Must

Of leaving loved ones too long

Because of living’s high cost

This prayer is for the woman

Who gave up her dreams because

Someone needed her more right now

And She was all there was

This prayer is for the man

Who is ‘living the dream’ its price

...sweat, mud, blood, fears, prayers and tears

…love’s sacrifice

This prayer is for you

Everyday heroes unsung

That God would guide and bless and keep

Our spirits forever kind and young

© Janet Martin