Finding My Mind...Wandering

I’m a day late with Thursday’s wikem. Thank-you Sasha, for the weekly inspiration! 

A mind /ˈmaɪnd/ is the set of cognitive faculties that enables consciousness, perception, thinking, judgement, and memory—a characteristic of humans, but which also may apply to other life forms

 Wikipedia

The trees are humming my favorite song

And I am trying to follow along

For in its new-born-green-leaf melody

My mind turns both friend and enemy

Letting me linger while letting me down

Fleet-fingered vortex vexing mortal crown

Keeping enough to let me know the rest

Somehow got lost in life’s juggle and jest

Where, like a clenched fist Thought tries to hold on

As time inhales and exhales, dusk, then dawn

While ever filling archives of the mind

Scattering pieces that I cannot find

But just now, when the blue breeze ran its grin

Over leaves, like Green-sleeves on a violin

...I heard a melody stirred in its twirl

Of half-woman and half yesterday’s girl

And I am inclined to allow my mind

To look for the pieces that it cannot find

Because, quite frankly, I find that my mind

Is a bit like a dandelion in the wind...

© Janet Martin

Mantra on May-green...

May-green rushes like an emerald ocean

Over earth’s trestles of umber and gray

Burgeoning rivers without sound or motion

Waken a wonder-world long held at bay

Now every limb is a hymn of sighed pleasure

Shush-shushing croon tunes earth’s blue-rafter room

Now every hill is a vault filled with treasure

Eager to spill its full measure in bloom

May-green surges to where air-eons merge

With verdant shorelines soft touching its sky

Miser and merchant cannot own the splurge

Rendered by nature to each passerby

Splendor indulges earth’s common bulges

Beauty and duty a stunning alloy

Merry the mantra as dark divulges

May-morning mercy-streams singing with joy

How does one spell with a quill such pure wonder?

How, from a crypt that seems stripped of all life

Can landscapes thunder with May-greenest plunder

Leaping from slumber to grace human strife?

Oh, it compels us to give God glory

No one on earth can boast power as this

Where May-green opens a new summer story

Ravishing earth with new-birth’s holy kiss

© Janet Martin 

I  just finished typing the word 'joy' at the end of the second stanza when sounds of ‘hoy, whoa!!’ drifted over May-green, through the window-screen and what should before my wondering eyes appear but a herd of cattle dashing, as giddy as rebels crashing a garden-party… and they did! Straight through my garden they thundered and one, feeling especially athletic sailed over the rail-fence barricade, the rest of more matronly endowment plundered through the fence after him with one clueless housewife giving chase!(I should have stayed in the house because they immediately bolted when they saw Miss Bed-head come a-flyin')

They are now in the process of corralling them in a neighbor’s field. Trying morning for a farmer.

But For God

Not for fame or fortune

Should we spend our days

But for God the Father

Who deserves all praise

Not for fickle riches

That this world endows

But for God who gives us

That which He allows

Not for adulation

Of our fellow-men

But for God; His glory

Forevermore, amen

© Janet Martin

Hard To Hold...

How momentary is all this, I think, 

as the apple-blossoms scatter like petal-snow, 

...as leaves lose their 'first-gold, hard to hold'...

How momentary this,

The bliss of bud unfurled

In sun and sorrow-kiss

To time’s four-season world

How momentary all

Earth’s sprawling mezzanine

Where creature-grief is small

In light of Hope’s Unseen

How momentary light

And dark of night exchange

Their hierarchy, where sight

And Belief are estranged

How momentary time

The pantomime of clocks

Leads to the nearing chime

Of That which death unlocks

© Janet Martin

Treasures in Jars of Clay

…Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

2 Cor.4:16-18

As For Man...

 (Song in Ojibway language with lyrics. Scroll down for words in English.)

“We are not here to celebrate life or death, said the minister at Vera’s funeral yesterday, but we are here to consider the seriousness of both.”

Here, where we love to laugh and learn

And contemplate time’s no return

Here, where the morning tide refills

What twilight drains to misted hills

Here, in the pulsing Must of Now

Before we lay our gauntlets down

We tread a sacred thoroughfare

That leads, for one and all to There

Here, in this hold-let-go affair

Of growing old beneath death’s stare

Here, where the flowers bloom then bleed

Upon the tomb that seals our need

Here, all who come to pass must climb

Beyond this little grass of time

For we are bound with common care

Toward that all-immortal There

There, where a roll-call will be read

There, where Truth crowns both hope and dread

There, where the place that we call Here

Will in a twinkle disappear

Thus, we are wise to contemplate

The awesome Prize that fools debate

And we would do well to prepare

Here, for forever’s over There

 

© Janet Martin

 As for man, his days are like grass; As a flower of the field, so he flourishes. When the wind has passed over it, it is no more, And its place acknowledges it no longer.…Ps. 103:15-16

Vera asked that we sing this song at the funeral service ...

O think of the home over there,
By the side of the river of light,
Where the saints, all immortal and fair,
Are robed in their garments of light.
Over there, over there,
O think of the home over there,
Over there, over there,
O think of the home over there.

O think of the friends over there,
Who before us the journey have trod,
Of the songs that they breathe on the air,
In their home in the palace of God.
Over there, over there,
O think of the friends over there,
Over there, over there,
O think of the friends over there.

My Savior is now over there,
There my kindred and friends are at rest,
Then away from my sorrow and care,
Let me fly to the land of the blest.
Over there, over there,
My Savior is now over there,
Over there, over there,
My Savior is now over there.

I’ll soon be at home over there,
For the end of my journey I see;
Many dear to my heart, over there,
Are watching and waiting for me.
Over there, over there,
I’ll soon be at home over there,
Over there, over there,
I’ll soon be at home over there.

Words: De­Witt C. Hunt­ing­ton, cir­ca 1873.

Music: Tul­li­us C. O’Kane 

Jesus is Coming
…"I, Jesus, have sent My angel to testify to you these things for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star." The Spirit and the bride say, "Come." And let the one who hears say, "Come." And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost. Rev.22:16-17