Of Moments Such As These

 Sometimes while the tots toddle and play in the snow...

... I snare a few pics as I waddle to and fro

seeking new wonders to devour

like winter's flower!

Through ramparts rife with stars and snow

Life's seasoned surges ebb and flow

Ah, storms subside then violets grow

On graves of winter spent

Where we of trial-and-error glove

Are always fitted with enough

To make the best of live-laugh-love

Beneath Time’s sky-wide tent

The tap-dance of Today soon dims

Where now a new arrangement brims

With never-before-wrested hymns

Soft-wrangled into place

For we, of mortal acumen

All students of love’s soul-full yen

Showcase footwork of ‘try again’

In ballrooms full of grace

This pain-and-pleasure albatross

This measure of both gain and loss

This heavy, treasure-laden cross

Can press us to our knees

To keep this frame of dust-to-dust

Dependent on hope’s humble trust

To curb the roar of wanderlust

With moments such as these

This oracle of day-to-day

Melts moments such as these away

Into the sum of do-and-say

A Very Holy Thing

As common molds of sleep and wake

Of hands we hold and bread we break

Turn Time into The Way We take

To bow before The King

© Janet Martin

Rhythm and Time

She feels the keys of ABC’s to find the notes that fit the mood

Sometimes the song lilts, light as air; Sometimes it broods, slow and subdued

Dissonant resonance reverberates and jars, its art

Vexes the Maestro that is often torn between the head and heart

Darling, the days are dimming faster than they did when we were young

And oh, it seems our chores and dreams dissolve like snow upon the tongue

As doggerel and dirge enmesh, and wow, how have we come so far

And oh my love, is that a tear or did the heavens lend a star

And tell me when we reach the part where the melody loses time

Let’s make a pact to keep intact the tender rhythm of the rhyme  

© Janet Martin

I’m listening to Victoria feel out the keys on the piano while learning a new song…

and it struck me how both musician and writer ‘feel’ the keys!

Winter Wind (or something like it)

He moans about the chimney-flue

And stokes a sudden flame within

They leap like shadows thin and blue

Like ballads from a violin

Where farewell feels like next of kin

And whispers keel and tug and woo

Upon the wave of dusky hue

That plays upon earth’s pallid skin

His kiss is cold and she is old

-er than she was, she knows full well

And no one told her of the smould-

-er that can fill dusk’s raven swell

With hugs that hurt too hard to spell

And all the words that would unfold

Get lost somewhere out in the cold

Like stars that sparked the dark and fell

© Janet Martin

On Cherishing the Beauty of Duty

No time at all to 'wax poetic', ever, these days,

I commented to Victoria on a full-of-Duty's-Beauty-and-interruption-Saturday,

(not as a complaint but merely as a conscious choice to remember

to treasure the measure of Now!)

...before the house turns quiet save for the tiptoe of echoes!

One of the moment-gold nuggets is 'summer-goodness' mid-winter!

These are not the days

When moments run

Like jazz through veins

Or Time is plush

Soft, like a brush

Of unrushed summer rains

These are days

Of Duty’s Beauty

Full of giving’s common call

Authoring the

Precious echoes

Of love’s finest days of all

These are the days

Of have and hold

And moment-gold's copious heaps

Before the quiet

Aftermath

Where busy-mess of living sleeps

© Janet Martin

Of War-Lords and Score-Boards

No one knows

But God

The bergs and floes

Of wars within

The woes and foes

We battle with

Beneath these

Common

Clothes of skin

Or how the Poet

And the Person

Are often at

Utter odds

Between the verses

His love authors

And the curses

Lust applauds

And how to unlearn

Selfish pity

or keep score

where urges  brim

With forces that

conflict with 

"less for me

and

all for Him"

© Janet Martin

 So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, 

do it all for the glory of God.

1 Cor.10:31