Love Letter to Life

After being a little under-the-weather for a day or two, but feeling better today there is

so much to love this new morning...

I love the way an hour drips

With virgin possibility

I love the way a moment slips

Twixt history and what will be

How, in the blip of now is cast

The Undoing of its conclave

How from the crib of Almost Past

Is borne the fodder of the grave

I love how ev’ry day is new

No rerun when the sun has set

Dawn ushers to earth’s avenue

A whole new Road not traveled yet

I love the way that you and I

Are growing old at the same pace

How all that we can do is try

To make the best of Time and Place

I love how we never know, quite

What waits beyond each dip and curve

How expectation’s appetite

Seems always keened to Nature’s verve

How we are all learning to cope

Subject to ready grin and frown

Kindred in both reproach and Hope

And thus, should help those who are down

I love the way wonder can steal

And still the tongue of wordy noise

I love the lilt of fresh appeal

In zeal of little girls and boys

I love the joys of simple things

Like laughter 'neath dusk's first bright star

…and I love you; and how heart-strings

Will always reach to where you are

© Janet Martin

Heart-felt prayers to all who are struggling with sickness and pain. 

There are so many of you!

(Someone called yesterday partly to wonder where I was the night before 

NOT at the concert I was hoping to attend because I was down with the flu)

  ...he prayed for me on the spot!

Very touching and special.

Dear Lord, be near and dear I pray

To those/we who travel suff'ring's Way

Lord, be their/our all-sufficient grace

Until they/we look upon Your face

When that first glimpse will satisfy

And answer every single 'why'

 

 Lamentations 3:57
You drew near when I called on You; You said, "Do not be afraid."

Grave Splendour...

The curlicue of liquid blue

Around the rocks that drew a laugh

From rivulets that spring begets

Are sealed in icy autograph

Where winter stills green-beaming hills

And draws a frigid curtain-close

Across the place where soft we trace

The echoes of the fallen rose

And learn anew the tried and true

Of how everything comes to pass

A bud that breaks and softly shakes

Its g-raven splendor to the grass

© Janet Martin

Of Soon-seasoned Art (and first hair-cuts)

 There goes our Baby!

 Big-boy first hair-cut!

Don't hold on to Time; tis futile

embrace Now but not too tight

Feel moment-ous Marvel sparkle

Through our touch and out of sight...

How tender, each splendor of soon-seasoned art

Time draws us together and tugs us apart

It grants what is given and takes it away

Summer is soon riven with rivers of gray

How subtle, Time’s metrical moment-parade

Primed with the rebuttal of passion’s swift trade

A pitiless poet; Duty and Dream smart

Where one moves the hand and the other the heart

How certain, the curtain that rises and falls

Snuffing yon horizons with star-sequined shawls

Lifting its elusive veil to gift Today

Ah, always renewing and taking away

How red are the roses disposed to decay

How precious the pictures that frazzle and fray

How tender the tick-tock that startles the heart

With breath-by-breath splendor of soon-seasoned art

This temporal treasure we measure in years

Is naught but a vapour that soon disappears

Now's nuances trumped by the Hands that impart

 The Way back to Him through Time's soon-seasoned art

© Janet Martin 

Flu-poem

This poem is made possible only because I'm feeling better than I was!😐

Shiver and shake

and fever and ache

and oh, nothing one can do

But lie and rest

 and remember how blessed

are days without the flu!

Janet

Point of View (have-to or get-to)

I was immediately challenged while writing this...

Someone called and woke up Sleeping Baby and I had to...oops, got to, change my 'plans' 

(This is written with the remembrance that some things we simply 'have-to'!

But even in the dark parts we 'get-to' choose whether we trust the Light, right?)

Wherever we are going 

Whatever we must do

We choose its joy or burden

By a 'Have to' or 'get to' view

Perception picks the colors

Of gray or blue and gold

Where faith or fear will offer

A 'have-to' or 'get-to' mold

How simple seems the format

Where choice will soon become

The happiness or heartache

Of have-to or get to's sum

Janet Martin

inspired by this morning's devotional reading

 

Prelude To 'Pass the Cookies, Please'

 Hoping to use a lot of these baking terms today😋

Press upon our hearts the reason for the season as we press

Cookies into stars and bells and other sugared happiness

Stir our souls with awe’s soft thunder for Hope’s splendor as we stir

Flour-sugar-butter-wonder into treats for him and her

Pour into thought’s mighty measure, more of You, Lord, as we pour

As we mix a moment’s pleasure into echo-lands of yore

Sift our spirit, strain out pride and worry as we whisk and sift

Lest the little lumps we discount are the sin that spoils the gift

Warm and melt to heartfelt worship, any hard, cold bitterness

As we work, make us a picture of contentment’s humble 'yes'

Knead until smooth, uncouth motive as we beat and whip and knead

Then when we pass out the cookies Christmas will be sweet indeed

© Janet Martin

and a bit of cookie-humour! 

Flicker

 No time to lose when it comes to Seizing the Moment!

like that moment when you sit a bit 

...and your lap is plunked full of books and babyish 'Weab!'(read)

The Mostly Messy...

It's all just a flicker on the wind... of change.

Doesn't every year seem to pass a little quicker than the flicker before?!

 This is either seven poems or one (you choose) I kinda pegged away at it all day

between household chores, and kissing Grandson's golden-curls etc!

No Time to lose; its ancient dues contingent on each breath

Constant rejuvenation from the archives of its death

Torment and titillation tug and tease; Today, a bark

That sails wide-open seas and disappears into the dark

To leave upon the trampled shoreline of the place it graced

A surreal awareness of what cannot be retraced

Away, away the essence of sheer presence woos and wanes

Where mourning and rejoicing fills its flue with loss and gains

Intangible Before bestows, as it runs through our touch

The ever-after-echoes of its laughter-tears and such

Where sky-high rafters ring with woeful sting and soulful sigh

As we grapple with shadow-dappled wings of days gone by

Time jars and scars where hours fall like stars on hearts and cheeks

An orb that flares and fades then turns to days and days to weeks

Then months, then years, ethereal spheres that spiral through our skin

Like trapeze artists light as air and less than paper-thin

They press the child toward grown men or women who become

Beneath the breath of tick and tock the graves projected sum

No time to spare; this thoroughfare where longing wars with peace

And ignites passion with ‘perhaps’ then signals its release

Teaches the students of its law unalterable Truth

How no one can outsmart the soft undoing of swift youth

…how hosts that toast the god of boast, like pompous puppeteers

Will someday be exposed; then who will save them from their fears

No time to waste; where touch and taste remembers and forgets

Dawn pirouettes, begets high noon then dusky silhouettes

While nature’s medals, summer’s petals, fall like russet snow

As young to old brave heat and cold of living’s come and go

And trade the wilding ways of Want for gaze, gentler and kind

Heartened by simpler Happiness of humble daily grind

No Time to hate; the greatest good of life is always love

It has nothing to hide; needs no excuse its worth to prove

It does not pick and choose nor act on narcissistic aim

But flows from giver to the world without excuse or shame

To make a little brighter-lighter, someone’s trouble-pack

Asking for nothing in return and holding nothing back

No time to leave undone, unsaid the best of say and do

Each precious day is never guaranteed to be seen through

The fragile thread that separates the living from the dead

Is held by Heaven’s holy hope or Hades hellish dread

We choose; no time to lose; before the Soul succeeds the man

As Time is snuffed; the flicker before Mercy’s Master Plan



 © Janet Martin