Your Mother's Heart...

 

It often looks like nothing much

Packed lunches; broom and mop

The tidy up and ‘extra-touch’

Of home-sweet-home on top

It might just look like ‘shoes to fill’

Or fresh-baked bread or pie

Or laundry washed and heaped until

It seems to reach the sky

Or hug and kiss, goodnight, sleep tight

Or ‘don’t forget to pray’

Or fingers washed or noses wiped

Or teardrops brushed away

…or window-sills with flowerpots

Or glass bowl filled with fruit

Or scolding naughty little tots

Lest seed of sin takes root

Or quirks that sometimes make you laugh

(Or roll your eyes a smidge)

Or keepsakes, like the photographs

That cover up the fridge

What do you see, dear girl and boy

Just dishes washed and dried?

After hot, home-cooked supper-joy

When it is cold outside

Does it just look like life to you?

Or chores performed in vain?

Shake-off-the-mats-and-run-the-vacuum

Through-the-house-again

Well, I would like to tell dear

These common works of art

Are not all that they would appear

They are your mother’s heart

© Janet Martin

If Time Would Tell It's 'Wait-and-See'

 Until our internet is working a little better this blog will be like a book without pictures...

(or links:) 

If we would know what high or low was waiting in the days ahead

We would be torn each night and morn between worlds of delight and dread

And we would peer through today’s cheer toward some morrow’s sorrow-storm

And miss the bliss and kiss of This because of Trouble’s looming form

If time would tell and boldly spell its wait-and-see so we could know

We would be bent with sad lament even if we had miles to go

Before we met the darker Yet that drains the rhythm from the rhyme

Our hearts would break for future’s sake and make us old before our time

I’m glad God gives the life one lives in moment-metered miles to brave

We need not bear tomorrow’s care to drive us to an early grave

But trust and pray, each day-to-day, for his divine Presence to lead

His faithful Word is undeterred; our God will supply every need (Phil.4:19)

© Janet Martin

Hope-Sweet-Hope

It fuels dreams and musters trust

It braves belief before the flow’r

And fills our frames of mortal dust

With The Immortal’s awesome pow’r

It lifts the heart from dark despair

And shifts the gaze from trouble’s tide

As it turns worry’s woe to prayer

And helps us find life’s brighter side

It whisper’s ‘upsy-daisy, dears’

And gathers up the down and out

To kiss away their fears and tears

And offer faith to would-be-doubt

It grants the confidence to try

Replacing dead ends with a goal

And when death slips twixt you and I

It is the Wing that wakes of Soul

© Janet Martin

What Makes a Man

 This would have been posted on May 2nd

(Matt's Birthday poem)

Happy 21st Birthday, Matt!

It is the mind that makes the man

Not his physique, his health- wealth- tan

Who Table of Thought entertains

The output of the man explains

…where every action (swift or not)

Is first the dinner-guest of Thought

It is the mind that makes the man

It feeds the thought that feeds the plan

Where plan fosters then fathers deed

Its fruit exposing hidden seed

…where no one can fight sin and win

Without the might of God within

It is the mind that makes the man

Wise then, is he who seeks God’s plan

How else can he keep his way pure?

Or taunts of the Tempter endure?

And how can he be ‘man enough’?

Be strong, yet kind, tender, yet tough

How can he face the foe of Truth?

Or find the right path in his youth?

How can his steps fall undeterred?

By keeping in his heart, God’s Word

Because without this, pity then

The mind that makes beasts out of men

© Janet Martin

How can a young man keep his way pure?

By living according to your Word.

I seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands.

I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.

Praise be to you, O Lord; teach me your decrees.

Psalm 119: 9-12

May's Paint Brush

This poet optimistically believes warm weather is on the way for Canadians too!

Some shots from last May... 

(I tried for a few hours to add a few more photos but the internet simply does not stay connected!!)
Why does that happen after a year+ of uninterrupted service?
There was nothing to fix or adjust here.
It looks like shopping for a new internet provider is the next hassle
+ dealing with the grubs that are feeding the skunks that are chewing up the lawn + getting our yard cleaned up and reseeded after all the winter digging due to flooding problems + OH! Right...
I'm talking about beautiful May in this poem;-)

The brush of May spills plushest pink

And lushest sweeps of green

Beneath the biggest bluest blink

That Time has ever seen

The aftermath of winter weaves

A crown of purest form

With flower-stars and froth of leaves

That takes the world by storm

While we, cold-weary, soak our smiles

In sunshine’s yellow sea

Where Beauty all around beguiles

Our gaze with poetry

For we have crossed the frosted fields

And snow-tossed mains of mud

Where (just as promised) waiting yields

The wonderment of bud

And we, winter’s forgivers now

Are glad to be a part

Of nature’s finest picture-show

In springtime’s world of art

© Janet Martin