Saturday, November 4, 2023

Or, So It Seemed to the Dreamer...

 PAD Challenge, day 2: For today’s prompt, write a childhood object poem. 


up and away

undefined 

by time and place

brushing perimeters of space

or so it seemed 

to the dreamer, 

then

with honey-colored braids

and an insatiable

 yen

that turned out to be

the cocoon that cradled

 Poetry...


On that rope swing

 she would try

to touch the sky

...the monotony of

an endless July 

afternoon

no match for the butterfly

inside the

 cocoon...


Janet~

Celebration-Declaration or Celebration of Life

 PAD Challenge day 1: For today’s prompt, write a declaration poem. 

(I clicked on the Writer's Digest Chapbook Challenge every morning
but simply could not carve out the freedom to join...
Trying a few of the challenges here this morning!
BTW, everyone is welcome to join in the poeming fun
 at Writer's Digest poem-a-day challenge all through November!)


Yesterday morning a friend dropped by with some
homemade soup she made with some kale I had given her
the week before!
Such a sweet surprise seemed perfect for sharing so
I packed up an impromptu picnic lunch and visited my mother-in-law!


I told her our lunch was a group-effort/blessing...
Pears from my sister Lucy, soup from my friend Elaine
and Apple Bread baked by my daughter Victoria!
We had a most precious afternoon so
completely unplanned!

So today I call a celebration-declaration
for all un-expectation waiting to turn to joy!

I call a celebration-declaration for Today
A kind determination of joy-expectation when
We purpose to be kinder, and humbly thankful; to pray
And thank God for the mercy's that He renews once again

To thank Him for blessings that we too oft under-esteem 
Loved ones within arms reach; those never out of reach of prayer
To praise Him for His goodness no matter how bad things seem
To know that He is able, as we cast on Him our care 

To look a little closer at what we call Commonplace
And then to realize it is not common after all
But rather, celebration-worthy measures of God's grace
Each task a sacred mission as we heed love's creature-call 

...and suddenly sweet wonder steals our breath with gratitude
For favors humbly noted, that we overlooked before
A celebration-declaration for Regard renewed
As we reply with prayer, especially for countries at war
 💔😢🙏

Janet Martin~

I also received a very special love-created thank-you card from Elaine...




Let's make today our thank-you card to God!




November-Frames

Stark silhouettes etched on backdrops of hasting dusk and tardy dawn...


 Joy-grief relief of gardens shucked, and turned and tucked beneath the sky...
(next year my make-shift grape-arbor needs a serious upgrade!!)😅



Still, stubbled sweeps of harvests reaped and gathered into bins and barns...


The morning-tide, a soundless sea that bathes the still-life lea with bronze...




Stark silhouettes etched on backdrops of hasting dusk and tardy dawn
Joy-grief relief of gardens shucked, and turned and tucked beneath the sky
The heart, a little like a cart by steads of fondest farewells drawn
The wind, a brisk custodian that whisks the brittle leaves awry

Still, stubbled sweeps of harvests reaped and gathered into bins and barns
The morning-tide, a soundless sea that bathes the still-life lea with bronze
The sudden, sweet tweet-tweet greeting as long-gone feathered friends return
The brooding tent of heavens bent with imminence of frosty fronds

The gaping gate where wonders wait to stun our gaze with grays and browns
Before the first soft snowflakes waft earthward from welkin worlds above
The beauty of spartan landscapes, of nature’s threadbare capes and gowns
Duty’s breath-stealing tasks, as thankfulness basks in God’s love

Brigadoon of November Noon, funereal fallow-hallowed hush
Fruit and root cellar shelves and floors festooned with toil and mercy’s toll
A heart-string unpreparedly snared on a crab-apple-dappled bush
The swing, bereft of barefoot child, a Masterpiece of Childhood’s Soul

Happiness dons kerchiefs and caps; laughter sounds small in fall’s ballroom
Each breath emits a puff of cloud, a bit like engines of a train
In ruddy cheeks and noses November’s kissable roses bloom
As leaves are raked and piled, and the child in each of us wakes again

Twilight’s twinkling front porch lights cheer work-weary streams of traffic home
Luxury is a cup of tea, a good book nook, and knitted shawl
And life is like the savoring of surprise flavours in a poem
Because November sometimes seems to be The Fairest of Them All

© Janet Martin


As we raked and heaped pile after pile of leaves at my parent's place
, we three children of yesterday (my brother, his wife and me)
 couldn't resist a a flying leap and romp because
something about leaf-piles wakes the child in us all.

A heart-string unpreparedly snared on a crab-apple-dappled bush...






Thursday, November 2, 2023

Sheer Veneer





Is the haste of a season sometimes almost more than you can bear too?

Tonight we lingered, sipping rich, black espresso in the crisp, gold dusk...




Time’s fabric is so sheer
Like mist-embellished gauze
That gathers up laughter and tears
Into the year that was

How easily it slips
Through fingertips and sighs
Like poetry of eyes and lips
Of hellos and goodbyes

Futile to linger where
The daylight disappears
Beneath a shawl of dark blue air
Un-weathered by the years

How swiftly seasons waft
Like silver thistledown
Above the quiet woodland doffed
Of spring-to-autumn’s crown

We reach but cannot trace
The thread that weaves the year
As season-stitches interlace
Time’s fabric remains sheer

Let's savor its sheer bliss
With love's sheer appetite 
And let the sheer wonder of This
Fill us with sheer delight

© Janet Martin











Worth Every Tender Mercy


God is not who we imagine Him to be.
God is who He says He is in His Word.
God's Word is not filled with suggestions of how to live
but sacred commandments.
 God, through the prophet Jeremiah, has repeated, dire warnings for
all 'who walk after the imaginations of their hearts'





To live, to love and do our part
With strength and mind, to serve the Lord
Is no charge for the faint of heart
Or those impatient for reward

For oftentimes, what seems so small
On the grand scale of recompense
Is not what it appears at all
When trust chooses obedience

Rather than the darling appeal
Of ‘happiness’ that money buys
No glamorous façade, the zeal
That presses to the Greater Prize

…God has prepared for the Blest Meek
Who look beyond the god/laud of Self
To heed the commandment to seek

Who loathe the cunning Tempter bent
On preening false illusion’s sway/prey
With logic’s soothing argument

Where Imagination deceives
The proud with promised lands that blind
With sight, what faith alone perceives

Is not yet, but someday will be
Worth every (secret) tender mercy poured
Into vaults of eternity

© Janet Martin

Pride is a great enemy to obedience
And quite the cunning foe!

Pride comes in so many forms...
last month our church participated in a fund-raised
meal-pack through Lifeline.
When donating online, the default-setting for donations
is to publicly display the donation amount (why??)
Mortified, I realized too late, after a few corrections
that my 'private' setting had switched back to 'public'!
I contacted Lifeline to please switch it to 'private'
but I think they had more pressing concerns😅🙏
(and it was very hard on my 'pride' to simply let it go)
Pride is such a stinker and humility SO hard to get;
the minute we think we have it we've lost it!!😂

Jesus taught us to give like this...
Matt.6:4
But when you give to the needy, 
do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,



Wednesday, November 1, 2023

Preciously Aware...

 Happy November!



Today's is my mom's birthday!
Our annual daughter and daughter-in-law's tea-party
is planned for next week because today she is celebrating with her sisters!
A very precious awareness of Each Other growing dearer
with each passing year!

A reminder for each of us to be preciously aware of Each Other! 

Time’s wheel of hopes and dreams and cares and prayers spins round and round
The hill where morrow’s stairway gleams at daybreak runs aground
And if we are not careful, we could miss what is today
While gazing at a stair full of mist-vendors far away
For, what is on display, both groaned and grinned, soon disappears
Like autumn leaves, chased by the wind, to pathless yesteryears

The physique of a wish is always just beyond our reach
And often we fail to critique the longings we beseech
Fixating on one point because it seems, to raptured sighs
To be want-worthy, while its flaws are lost in starry eyes
Until wisdom esteems that sage advice from days of yore
Not all is as it seems, then be careful what you wish for’

As time goes by, I want for less, yet covet more, a heart
Of humbler thankfulness for what God’s kind mercies impart
I want to be determined, in love’s hold and letting go
To keep one ear tuned to a wind that always steals the show
Then not to mourn the past or fret at what ‘yet’ holds at bay
But to be preciously aware of what Time grants today

© Janet Martin

James 4:15
Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.”


Tuesday, October 31, 2023

Sacred Similes or Art-Accountability Awareness

Like a vast lake,
blush, blue and gold
unfolding overhead...

...where daybreak, like a threshold to pictures that dusk will seal
Ought first to be a blush-blue-golden altar where we kneel ...


Like canvases to sketch upon, Today is always new...


The art succeeding stretch-and-yawn is up to me and you
Where circumstance is but the scrim we splash with artistry...



Like a vast lake, blush, blue and gold unfolding overhead
Day breaks; and from yon welkin hold dawn’s fledgling wings are spread
Where, young and old alike embark, like a migrating surge
Of souls, pressing toward the mark of eternity’s verge
Where it is not made known to us how far the future splays
Until we tread the exodus of mist-like, numbered days

Like canvases to sketch upon, Today is always new
The art succeeding stretch-and-yawn is up to me and you
Where circumstance is but the scrim we splash with artistry
From mercy-granted trays that brim with opportunity
To sing a hymn, to breathe a prayer, to lend a helping hand
To be kind and humbly aware of time’s trickle of sand

Like a tree softly doffed of leaves, moment-momentum keens
The seed that grows into the sheaves that harvest-season gleans/weans
Like artists poised before pedestals as dawn hoists Today
We brush-daub-lob Originals that appear drawn away
But not forever; someday when our ‘painting-days’ are done
God will be the Appraiser, studying them, one by one

Oho, surely in light of this, there is no Commonplace
Each day is like a holy kiss from God, a gift of grace
Dawn’s debut, as it rends the air, propels eternity
Toward each one of us, bearing Soul’s immortality
Thus, whether young or old, before we start Art of Today
Not one of us should be so bold as to forget to pray

...where daybreak, like a threshold to pictures that dusk will seal
Ought first to be a blush-blue-golden altar where we kneel 
To thank God for His favours and to ask Him to direct
Where many tints and flavours taunt, flaunt, wink and interject
Then, beseech His whisper to wage, where brushstrokes heed command  
So all that remains on the page are imprints of His Hand
   
© Janet Martin

The trees are definitely being 'softly-doffed' today!



Today's post inspired in part by part of my morning Scripture reading...

Jer.17:5-10
This is what the Lord says:
“Cursed is the one who trusts in man,
who draws strength from mere flesh
and whose heart turns away from the Lord.
6 That person will be like a bush in the wastelands;
they will not see prosperity when it comes.
They will dwell in the parched places of the desert,
in a salt land where no one lives.

7 “But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
whose confidence is in him.
8 They will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit.”

9 The heart is deceitful above all things
and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?

10 “I the Lord search the heart
and examine the mind,
to reward each person according to their conduct,
according to what their deeds deserve.”

Also,
Partly by a line in the book The Irrational Season
by Madeleine L'Engle
"If you were arrested as a Christian, 
would there be enough
evidence against you to convict you?"

...and partly by an immense sense of standing on a fresh canvas of Time,
as I watched the sunrise unfolding

May You ask for and sense God's Hand over yours today!
Happy Painting!

Mine involves a scrub bucket and other
fall-cleaning essentials!
(like good music!)
Like this one!





Monday, October 30, 2023

Father In Heav'n (Yet Near Enough...)

Ps.9:1-2 &8- 9
(read the whole glorious chapter here)

I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart;
I will recount all of your wonderful deeds.
I will be glad and exult in you;
I will sing praise to your name, O Most High...

...The Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed,
a stronghold in times of trouble.
And those who know your name put their trust in you,
for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you.

Oh how our hearts groan as we pray 
for cares close to home and far away...

(yet, oh so near!)

I began this poem bright and early but the New Furnace Installers arrived
bright and early as well!
And because the computer, where I write is right in the main living area
where they were constantly walking through
I decided to finish it after they finished, 
which turns out to be tonight!

This poem was inspired in part as the very familiar opening to The Lord's Prayer
filled me with fresh wonder!!



Father in Heav’n, (yet near enough to hear Thought’s heart-borne plea)
How oft, with reverence and love, through living’s high and low
We pour before Thy throne of grace, our praise and agony
There You restore our souls so we can face faith’s cunning foe
Where, without You vainly we grope for hope and comfort true
For, hopeless is all hope without the hope we find in You

Father in Heav’n, (yet near enough to catch a falling tear)
No circumstance transcends Your love that reconciles and saves
Goodness and mercy’s author, You tread on dread’s storms of fear
When doubt’s dark tempests bother, You rebuke its wind and waves
As, through the power of your Word You fit us for the day
Faithful and true, You undergird all who trust and obey

Father in Heav’n (yet near enough to be our constant Stay)
Your love, an everlasting love that calls us all by name
You came to seek the lost, for all like sheep have gone astray
And though you knew the cost you did no King’s exemption claim
But suffered in our stead the price, redemption’s crown to win
Once and for all, the sacrifice that broke the curse of sin

Father in Heav’n, (yet near enough to know our every need)
Deliver us from evil with Your love that will not fail
When we do not know how to pray, Lord, kindly intercede
Remind us, come whatever may, Your purpose will prevail
No enemy can intercept what love has overcome
Father in Heav’n, (yet near enough to lead us gently home)

Amen

© Janet Martin