From Ilk Silk-soft...

 The air tonight seemed to vibrate with frog and bird song...

Come, for Time is eager

In its seamless sway

To hurry tomorrow

Into yesterday

Come, while it is spilling

From its willing spree

Ilk of silk soft-sealing

Now to history

Come, before the picture

Of it is held fast

In that phantom tincture

Echoing with Past

© Janet Martin

June

Let the wind waft in soft kisses

Let the sea-song wash our toes

Though green pastureland embraces

North-south-east-west ebb-and-flows

Let the aftermath of flowers

Tease the air with pungent blush

While the artist tints yon-bowers

With a silver-turquoise brush

Let the meadow brim with clover

Let the morning sing for joy

Let the loom of bloom spill over

Filling fists of girl and boy

Let the blue and golden glimmer

Of a slow-churned afternoon

Be the first sweet sip of summer

Let me call its free-fall June

© Janet Martin

...and sharing a poem I found in one of my books today that I love, love, LOVE! mortality and immortality juxtaposed

That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection

By Gerard Manley Hopkins

 

 

Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows | flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-

Built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs | they throng; they glitter in marches.

Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, | wherever an elm arches,

Shivelights and shadowtackle ín long | lashes lace, lance, and pair.

Delightfully the bright wind boisterous | ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare

Of yestertempest's creases; | in pool and rut peel parches

Squandering ooze to squeezed | dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches

Squadroned masks and manmarks | treadmire toil there

Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, | nature's bonfire burns on.

But quench her bonniest, dearest | to her, her clearest-selvèd spark

Man, how fast his firedint, | his mark on mind, is gone!

Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark

Drowned. O pity and indig | nation! Manshape, that shone

Sheer off, disseveral, a star, | death blots black out; nor mark

                            Is any of him at all so stark

But vastness blurs and time | beats level. Enough! the Resurrection,

A heart's-clarion! Away grief's gasping, | joyless days, dejection.

                            Across my foundering deck shone

A beacon, an eternal beam. | Flesh fade, and mortal trash

Fall to the residuary worm; | world's wildfire, leave but ash:

                            In a flash, at a trumpet crash,

I am all at once what Christ is, | since he was what I am, and

This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, | patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,

                            Is immortal diamond.

According To My Calculations...

According to my Calculations…

No amount of pleading

Can resurrect the Past

Or breathe life into death; no one

Can barter with the cast

That hails to us from Bygone’s sphere

No one can make time disappear

Before it filters through God’s grace

Into our need-greedy embrace

Where, here within its no return

No one can be too old to learn

Too young to die, too strong to crawl

Too assured of his pride to fall

According to my calculation

Regardless of one's creed or laud

We are all in this together

Only by the grace of God

© Janet Martin

This Ladder That We Climb

This ladder that we climb reaches through stars, though fixed on sod

Bound by the grip of time we climb the height of it to God

And all the recollections that we weave then leave behind

Are but the dust of living in life’s taking-giving grind

This ladder that we climb through hope and heartache’s wondering

Seems horizontal in its vertical-cast hungering

Its forward, upward rise and falling valley-deep incline

Tests mortal boast where time plays host to more than clock-design

This ladder that we climb through bluebell chime and russet sheaf

Is more than mime of tick-tock rhyme where faith and unbelief

Battle within the human-breast like storms upon a sea

Because we know we cannot barter with eternity

Then we should give more earnest heed to all that we have heard

This bleeding angst of want and need cannot be undeterred

But eases us upward toward the pinnacle of time

Where God waits at the zenith of this ladder that we climb

© Janet Martin

Surrender...

Once more the birth of morn falls prey

To noon then dusk, midnight

Then dawn

Where oft we hunger to untwist

The mist that time insists

Upon

As gossamer of years adheres

To patterns patterned in

The Womb

Of Eden’s heaven, before tears

After The Fall; earth bore

A Tomb

For Death was introduced to life

And man to toil and pain’s

Travail

Time’s threads twisted into a knife

That only God can wield;

The grail

From whence the birth of morn falls prey

To noon then dusk, midnight

Then dawn

Pours mist we hunger to untwist

But God instills His will

Upon

© Janet Martin

Teaching Tools

 The sun just broke through the tumbled cloud blue!

 (and the internet returned after an extra-long hiatus:)

Lord, teach us faith, so we may trust

And kiss the rod that tempers us

Where we, foot-shod must walk until

We fly above this mortal swill

Then God will strip our dust-frames bare

For we will need no armor there

Lord, teach us hope, highlight life's woes

With grace from whence all mercy flows

To clay, the harbor of the soul

Then, lest comfort be god or goal

Lord, rouse in us a passion higher

Than the flame of shame’s bonfire

Lord, teach us love so we may be

In every step-by-step, like Thee

For hate can never usurp love 

Or be greater than God above

For God is love, Supreme Decree

That broke sin's curse and set us free

Lord, teach us faith and hope and love

This string that weaves time’s stinging glove

Will soon disintegrate; its reach

Like waves dissolving on a beach

When dust, blood-brimming falls to naught

And faith becomes the sight we sought

© Janet Martin