Moment-drops

They roll in seamless waves

Across time’s formless shore

To seal in mystic graves

The echo of their roar

Hope, fear, anguish and awe

In passion-pulses weep

From future to our fingertips

To past’s unfathomed deep

Within the dead of night

They do not still their rush

And on the hinge of morning light

They shape its virgin blush

Against this obscure scope

We place desire’s fruit

Our sorrow and our hope

Both wickedness and good

Like flakes of melting snow

Its soundless storms descend

Perpetual moment-flow

Without beginning or end

We live and laugh and love

As to our lips they’re flung

Vertigo from vaults above

To glance upon our tongue

Simultaneous stream

Of future, present, past

In moment-morsels gleam

As history seals them fast

© Janet Martin

Where Do the Flowers Go?

They do not really die

They merely fall asleep

Beneath blue-blanket sky

And soil of umber keep

Gather your sorrows near

We cannot still the wheel

Of time as it doles out the year

In moment-pulsed quadrille

To everything on earth

There is a portioned hour

A season of new birth

From bud to lovely flower

A season to let go

Relinquishing to sod

The petals of life’s ebb and flow

For we belong to God

© Janet Martin

A Time for Everything...Eccl. 3: 1-12

 There is a time for everything,
    and a season for every activity under the heavens:

    a time to be born and a time to die,
    a time to plant and a time to uproot,      

a time to kill and a time to heal,
    a time to tear down and a time to build,     

a time to weep and a time to laugh,
    a time to mourn and a time to dance,      

a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
    a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,      

a time to search and a time to give up,
    a time to keep and a time to throw away,     

 a time to tear and a time to mend,
    a time to be silent and a time to speak,      

a time to love and a time to hate,
    a time for war and a time for peace.

 What do workers gain from their toil?   

I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race.  

He has made everything beautiful in its time. 

He has also set eternity in the human heart; 

yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.  

I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live.

Images of Praise

How can our praise remain

A brief, un-uttered thought?

As images of passion brim

In shades that Heaven wrought

We pass this way but once

A sun and shadow flight

Where images of love entrance

Our vision with His might

The earth, beneath His care

Spills seasons on the land

As stunning images declare

The wonders of His hand

How can our song be still

In brief, anemic gaze

As sky and sea, as field and hill

Burst forth in nature’s praise?

Dare we to remain dumb

While stones and mountains swell

With images of wordless song

Mere men can never quell?

Oh, may our hearts and lips

Pour forth in word and deed

Pure images of thankfulness

As He sustains our need…

…and may our songs of praise

Never dare to be still

As images of hope and grace

Adorn earth’s mortal rill

© Janet Martin

“I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.” Luke 19:40

Holy, Holy, Holy

Thanksgiving Day Praise

I praise you, oh my Lord

Your mercies never cease

In tenderness out-poured

Of wisdom and of peace

Help me to serve you Lord

Not for man’s affirmation

But in true gratitude

With humble adoration

 Guide my footsteps, Lord

Across earth’s beaten sod

The beacon of your Word

My everlasting rod

Your goodness and your grace

Oh, let this be my joy

Not triteness of this world

That time and death destroy

I praise you, oh my Lord

Oh, let me honor You

With gratitude out-poured

In everything I do

© Janet Martin

It is the official Thanksgiving Day here in Canada. I will be spending the rest of it hopefully out-doors in God’s wonderful creation.

Oh, Do not Leave~

Oh do not leave

Or else I may forget

All the words I want to tell you

But have not

Yet

An hour is short
Darling, please stay

A life-time is too brief

For all I want

To say

Oh, do not leave

The night is dark

And long alone

Silence is too cold

And monotone

J~

Another Autumn Sonnet

It pierces through our pampered summer skin

A sudden chill spilling against the earth

Reality consumes youth’s guileless grin

As teasing zephyrs harness languid mirth

The landscape tugs the hemline of the deeps

Across the molten autumnal array

Far on the slope the towering maple weeps

Into the sepulcher of life’s decay

The circuit of its fleeting gasp is stark

Against the canvases of gath’ring dark

The fret-works of fall’s naked branches reach

In unadorned humility and praise

Toward their Maker’s throne; the empty beach

Echoes the laughter of fair sun-drenched days

As leaf by burnished leaf the autumn drips

Into a vault of summers predeceased

Realization in keen kindness grips

The heart in melodies of love released

And yet as seasons pass beneath earth’s sun

Love’s hope and happiness are never done

When the last leaf drifts soundless to our feet

And silence threads the passages of time

We pause; entranced within the bittersweet   

Of autumn’s sweet and solemn pantomime

The darling rose, the crimson anemone

Bleeds back into the dust from whence it sprung

And in the haunting hollow undertone

Of early night we hear a still-song flung

Into the void of autumn’s barrenness

Beneath the Hand of hope’s tender caress

© Janet Martin

Thanksgiving Praise Sonnet

How gracious is the Hand tinting the tress

With scarlet hues and bronze-petal array

He draws the eye to summer’s swift decay

And gilds the autumn strand with awesomeness

Beneath the lowered arches of the cloud

The earth responds to Heaven’s will sublime

To everything purposed thing there is a time

Thus seasons pass through mercy’s tender shroud

And mortal marvels at His patient grace

That He should please our gaze with such delight

When oft we fret and thanklessly we pine

He lends to earth the shadow of a Place

Not made with Hands; where faith at last is sight

Our eyes traverse the barred horizon-line

We glimpse His love; astonished we descry

But earthly frames of Him as we behold

Each season-scape; the emerald turns to gold

Spring’s verdant rush is fall’s depleting sigh

The quadrille of life’s swift four-season scope

Dances across Time’s charted centuries

Thought cannot grasp unmarked eternities

And as we cling to promises of hope

Our wonderment abounds and escalates

For what is man that He remembers him?

And rescues us from utter wantonness

A mirror of His goodness He creates

As glory crowns the humble, wooded limb

And gilds the autumn strand with awesomeness

Lift up your voice; oh, God accept our praise

You do not leave us groveling in the dirt

But in life’s grievous toiling and its hurt

You stun the meek spectator with Your ways

And though we do not understand your thought

We trust; holy compassion spills its heart

And lends to humble sod Your perfect art

In manuscripts of nature we are taught

To everything on earth there is a time

From seed to bud to bloom then back to earth

This is the way of dust; His righteousness

In grand profusion, wondrous and sublime

Imbues our paltry pittance with His worth

And gilds the autumn tress with awesomeness

© Janet Martin

 

Trembling...

Trembling

You came to me

Trembling,

I held you

And trembling

I loved you so

Trembling,

Soft moments

Slip by unnoticed

Soon, trembling

I must let you go…

J~

Hands let go, but hearts hold forever.