Soul-Song

The silence holds an orchestra; its Maestro is our thought

And oh, the tender beauty of its soft, soulful requiem

Fills with an earnest solace the vast void of what is not

And lights the wick that once burned wildly with a daring dream

The sinister employment of our dubious tendencies

Dissolves upon the lilting notes of effervescent cheer

Be gone regret, and all its suffocating memories

The music of this silence weeps a sweeter sort of tear

…it will not pause to flounder in the dismal darkness where

We grapple with the conflict of desire and despair

This Maestro does not paint its smile with pretense or disguise

The measure of its tempo wraps us in love’s true embrace

No digital enhancements, no lip-syncing and no lies

For Thought is the discerner of the man behind the face

And oh, the sweet redemption that we seek for being us

And oh, the fervent longing to be heard and understood

At last spills free into a silence filled with what once was

But is no more; for Thought convicts where no man would or could

My failure and regret would be far more than I could bear

Forgiveness not for others, but for self ignites a tear

…the silence is not shattered as it falls upon my cheek

The Maestro gently nods but does not seek to quell its flow

A melody of grace-proportion fills unfathomed deeps

Its cadence fills the vault from whence the timeless night-winds blow

As mercy not ordained by what mortality deems fit

But from the One that tunes the Maestro in its rendering

Absolves me from a reckoning that flesh cannot acquit

And only in the utterance of full surrendering

Can I at last descry the melody that tunes the soul

As Maestro yields its baton to the One that makes us whole

© Janet Martin

Heaven's Disguised Kisses

Sometimes this...

Does not feel
like heaven's kiss...
...but it is.

'I found myself restraining a great big Monday morning sigh

As its relentless repetition at first glance, held no appeal

But as I studied it more fully suddenly I realize

Heaven-glimpses on earth are real

Mom; aka Janet

A few minutes ago...

Mom: Melissa, please go and tidy your room.

Melissa: Didn't I just do that?

Mom: I wouldn't know...

Sweet, Sweet New Day...

 Today she is modestly clad in frigid gray...

Sweet, sweet new day, what have we done

That you should thus return

With offerings of patient love

Which far too oft we spurn?

Sweet, sweet new day, what do you hold

Within your mystery?

What waits concealed within the folds

Soon shaping history?

Sweet, sweet new day, pure, pristine path

Soon your robe will be rent

Its hem stained with the aftermath

Of pride and passion spent

Sweet, sweet new day, we don’t deserve

Your kind, gracious embrace

Your predecessors bear witness

Of our sad disgrace

…yet with compassion you entrust

Your moments to our care

While we, pilgrim’s of humble dust

Your joy and sorrow bear

Sweet, sweet new day, humbly I pray

You do not come in vain

Sweet, sweet new day, for you will never

Pass this way again

© Janet Martin

This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. Ps.118:24

Refurbished Hope

 (some photos of 'her face' in the past week)

I never tire of your face

From dark folds you emerge

A newborn gathering of grace

Pure, virgin moment-surge

Somehow twixt farewell and hello

You shed your haggard stance

Where steps disheartened, weary, slow

Yearn now to leap and dance

Your form, refreshed and darkness-bathed

Exhales replenished mirth

Your labyrinth of yesterdays

Cannot return to earth

From charcoal cocoon your emerge

Draping the sunless slope

With tender mercy’s rampant splurge

And dawn’s refurbished hope

© Janet Martin

So often it amazes me, how the old becomes new in the morning.

What our mothers said is true, 'it always looks better in the morning'.

Fishing For Answers

PROMPT #90. Ekphrastic Poetry – 2013 Photo Prompt #1

By Poetic Bloomings

If you had not left

then perhaps I would hear

more than the whisper

of time disappear

and I would hear gladly

those feet in the park

instead of standing

here sadly

fishing

in the dark

If you had not left

would the tide cease its crying?

would gray day

not murmur

the color of dying?

If you were still here

to cast, next to me

your beautful dream

would the sun

shine suddenly?

 ...or will this river swell

with the gathering of tears,

 of birch-leaf and moments

lost in yester-years?

If you had not left

would we fish together

and would every day

be

perfect weather?

Janet Martin~ 

*Photo credit: Keith R. Good.(Photos by Keith Good Facebook Community Page)

Poetry, Waiting to be Written

 (This morning it is gray rain-poetry; see below, so I chose a photo from earlier this week)

The dawn is imbibed with expectation

And diminishing deep

We are drunk with the elation

Wrought by sleep

As footsteps dash,

They slip and splash

Into its gilded room

The earth, a palace

We, the kings and queens

Of mercy’s bloom

To wish and dream another day

To live and laugh

And love and pray

And bear the virtue of its sway

Until Time’s bending tide

Breaks on the cove of twilight’s shore

And it is gone forevermore

Into the ditch with days of yore

Blessing and burden lie

Poetry flickers in each precious tick

Mortality trembles; a flame on life’s wick

Janet~

Rain-poetry; this NOT what our typical mid-January looks like.

 

Sunday Whirl: #91

 

Sacred Charge

 

We cannot put it down and walk away

For this is not a novel or a bloom

Plucked as we see the birthing of a day

Bursting in radiance on earth’s living-room

To render its allowances of grace

Before night seals its mien to memory

No, no, the tender honor we embrace

Remains; from now until eternity

As we behold, in awe-struck reverence

The magnitude of its deliverance

We suffer through its valley of travail

And then, as heaven draws its gate ajar

Lending to humble arms, in infant wail

The wonderment of things holy and far

We thus accept, not gifts of trivial worth

To treasure or dispose of as we choose

But, from the hands of God to lowly earth

He sends a charge that we cannot refuse

Of uttermost importance from above

A miracle of hope and life and love

This divine dispensation of His joy

Is staggering and sweet beyond compare

From this day forth the moments we employ

Have been transformed to bear life’s dearest care

And we will never be the same again

As we accept our heaven-tenured lot

Life’s fondest pleasure is love’s deepest pain

To teach a child is to by God be taught

This sacred charge is unlike any other

A newborn cries and we become…

A mother

© Janet Martin

Sometimes the tender brief, yet eternal magnitude of it all steals my breath...there is no quitting, no dismissal from this bitter-sweetest charge.

Of Hastening Hours...an edited re-post

 (I took this photo the other day; stubble-art)

Far too soon the lily sleeps
Beneath frost-gilded kiss
Where far too soon the red limb weeps
Her robe of summer's bliss
And far too soon blue shadows lie
Across the musky leaf
As Augusts’ burnished breezes die  
Like laughter tasting grief

Far too soon the autumn glow

Is snuffed 'neath winter’s shroud
Where nature’s garnered grudges blow
From darkened, bully-cloud
But just as summertime and fall
Must yield to winter’s will
Soon, soon we hear the robin's call
As spring sweeps o’er the hill

Far too soon the seasons come
And far too soon they rest
Far too soon my little home
Will be an empty nest
As far too soon the green and gold
Lies withered on the grass
And far too soon I’m getting old
As quickened seasons pass

© Janet Martin

Reluctant Revelations

 

Perhaps it’s a level

Of maturity

Realizations

Of what cannot be

Or perhaps it is simply

That I resisted

To accept what never

Really existed

Perhaps it is nothing

But an excuse

To redeem myself

From truths I refused

Perhaps I fell in love

Not with a thing

But with the enticement

Of what it might bring

Perhaps I really was

Foolish and bold

Or perhaps I am merely

Getting old

© Janet Martin

The Plight of Human Heart

Like the birthing of a brook

To the swelling of the sea

It’s tenure not of flesh and blood

Bleeds agonizing ecstasy

Borne earnestly in mortal fronds

Of trembling lip and timorous touch

An ocean held within the bonds

Of heartbeat, thought and prayer and such

From whence it springs, I cannot say

But oh, it steals my breath away

Violent, intense, reclusive, sweet

It keens the mute and morbid dark

Or rages where the floundering dream

Pines for its pure and virgin spark

Its mighty ethereal eons surge

Fulcrum of ageless misery

Yet author of love-song and dirge

And raw, unpolished poetry

From whence it swells, I do not know

But oh, it makes me miss you so

Does jasmine by the summer brook

Bear unbeknownst, its misery?

Or eagle on the rocky crag

Do they suffer such ecstasy?

Nay, I dare say such wordless want

Though whispered in the wandering wind

And murmured in the hidden haunt

Where poplar sighs and brook-songs blend

Must be endured in fleshed rampart

Longing; the plight of human heart

© Janet Martin 

Winter-brook

 (Sometimes I come here, just to listen...video is a little jerky at first but eventually 'smooths' out)

She tunes the hollow winter hush

In rushing, gushing glee

Laughing beneath thicket and brush

A prisoner set free

Where cattails drained her summer cup

Autumn’s release has filled her up

And now she spills her lullaby

Meandering out to the sky

Winter eases its rigid stance

And from its frozen swell

A lilting cadence of romance

Sweeps through the dormant dell

A surge of passion-perfect pitch

Embellishes the laud-less ditch

Of silenced wood-song’s dismal dirge

She sings with grief-abandoned urge

Now high, now low, hastening, slow

Enchanting melody

As splashing, dashing love-songs flow

In sonnets to the sea

Lest soon the northern gales entice

To seal her lay in shrouds of ice

She finds, somewhere, a lenient nook

To hum the hymn of winter-brook

© Janet Martin

Wonderful Wealth

‘Tis most surely

A glorious

Luxury

To be rich enough

To enjoy

Nature's beauty

© Janet Martin

‘The need and the suffering is so great here that they cannot see the beauty’

Words to a friend’s son who was in Ecuador last year and he commented on the breath-taking, inexpressible beauty of the mountainous landscape. He commented that, ‘at least they live in all this beauty’. To be rich enough to see and enjoy the beauty of creation is wealth, unspeakable wealth.

I often think of these words as I marvel at the gifts of nature and the awesome wonder of creation. 

 

Sad Night-Song...

Sweetheart, the still is throbbing with a sensuous melody

Or is it just the night-wind sobbing in the willow-tree?

Seems I can hear an ocean crashing on a jagged coast

Or is it just the echo of something I miss the most?

Sweetheart, where is the vortex that inhales our fantasies?

What turns the sweet heart bitter, jading soft intimacies?

I hear a love-song sighing somewhere out against the dark

Or is it just the crying of a star that lost its spark?

Sweetheart, I hear the cadence of the midnight murmuring

A cello in the distance; or is it the whispering

Of summer in a garden where the blooms were lush and sweet

Before we sensed their petals cold and parched beneath our feet?

© Janet Martin

Of Prayer

 

I have friends far away that need our prayers right now; lots and lots of it. God knows what we have need of even before we ask of Him, yet oh, how He desires that we seek Him and ask. ‘Ask and it will be given you, seek and ye will find, knock and it will be opened unto you.’ Matt. 7:7

It travels through ramparts of doubt and despair

It lifts us from quagmires of fear

There is no distance that it cannot reach

It draws distant loved ones near

It moves, unhindered by evil’s intent

It scatters the schemes of distrust

It fills the unknown with God-rendered peace

As satan torments this world’s dust

It carries us through the dark valley of ‘wait’

It comforts as He intercedes

For we know God’s answers are never late

Because He knows our uttermost needs

Of mountain and desert, of vast rolling sea

There is no height and no depth

That prayer cannot touch in the instant of thought

And God will tend to all the rest

© Janet Martin

Please, could you pray for 'them' and their need. God knows what we do not.

Transitions...

 ( This morning it seemed as if the sun broke through a heavy wall of cloud glued to the horizon)

It is not forever

The cloud-cumbered sky

Morning will scatter

Its shadows awry

It is not forever

The dark-laden deep

Gladness will follow

The tears that we weep

It is not forever

The rain or the sun

Humbly we whisper

Lord, Your will be done

© Janet Martin

Pride Test or Trust Issue?

Crumble me then

If you must

Cracker in Your hand

Dust to dust

Humble me then

If, after all

Pride is forerunner

To the fall

© Janet Martin

Do we trust God enough to really, REALLY want Him to do this? The thought occurred to me as I contemplated some crushed crackers...how sometimes God has to do this to us for our own good, and then came a whispered challenge; Do I trust Him enough to ask Him for it?

Of Fellowships

To fellowship where slumbering blues

Steal over late-day avenues

And where the chill wind sweeps awry

Smoke trails from chimney to the sky

Where snow-bunting and sparrow flit

To nests as each star-lamp is lit

And all we hear is twilight’s tune

Dripping from pallid crescent moon

To fellowship with nature’s kin

Of tree and hill and echoing

Of seasons that have swept their girth

Returning thus, from earth to earth

And to behold the great, the small

In winter, spring, summer and fall

To fellowship with miracles

Is to touch living’s pinnacles

But for one holy, higher plain

Where heaven bends to heal earth’s pain

As we commune with He who shapes

The fellowship of nature-scapes

© Janet Martin  

Lord, our Lord,
    how majestic is your name in all the earth!

You have set your glory
    in the heavens.
²Through the praise of children and infants
    you have established a stronghold against your enemies,
    to silence the foe and the avenger.
³ When I consider your heavens,
    the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
    which you have set in place,
⁴ what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
    human beings that you care for them?

⁵ You have made them a little lower than the angels
    and crowned them with glory and honor.
⁶ You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
    you put everything under their feet:
⁷ all flocks and herds,
    and the animals of the wild,
⁸ the birds in the sky,
    and the fish in the sea,
    all that swim the paths of the seas.

⁹ Lord, our Lord,
    how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Psalm 8

Imminent Change

It drips to the quiet

A somnolent strain

Intangible trembling

Of imminent change

Nothing lasts forever

Nothing stays the same

We live in a moment

Of imminent change

Hill-top or valley

Or wide open range

Are ever the pathway

To imminent change

What must be will be

We cannot re-arrange

The way of a moment

And imminent change

Live freely, love fully

And think it not strange

That life is a journey

Of imminent change

© Janet Martin

On some nights I feel it keenly and then I'm so thankful that

  Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Heb. 13:8

Memory-Quilts

It hovers above me

So I draw it near

A quilt stitched with laughter

And heartache and tear

Morning and evening

And all in between

Shape love’s darling patches

Of what once had been

Invisible handiwork

Intricate blend

Of snippets and pieces

That living will send

And fitted together

To warm and to cheer

Are four-season colors

Of year against year

Who knows the fabric

Waiting to be placed?

Who knows the patterns

Waiting to be traced?

But oh, what sweet comfort

To draw to our hearts

Those quilts made of memories

That loving imparts

© Janet Martin

Tonight when I called hubby for our evening chat he told me he had a flash-back as he watched a truck-driver hug his little girl and she wailed as he climbed in his truck and drove away ...

This was one of those rare evening when all four kids were at home AND in a good-ish mood! So we were downstairs where the fire crackled, each with our books, puzzles, ipods, and I fell asleep. They laughed at me as I woke from a solid nap and a missed 'together' time. I guess they'll remember how mom used to fall asleep with a book on her face:( I am so cross to have sort of 'missed' the evening, even if they likely didn't notice) Then after talking to Jim, (hubby) I pulled at that old memory quilt and added a patch.

Merry Christmas to my Russian Friends

We do not celebrate

A season or a day

We celebrate the Christ-child

who washes our sins away

…and so we celebrate

The everlasting joy

Of Heaven’s Own come down to earth

In that wee baby boy

A daily jubilee

Is our celebration

Jesus loves you and me

Offering salvation…

…to all who will believe

In Him; Jesus, God’s Son

Sets captive sinners free

With three words; ‘it is done’

And so we celebrate

Not seasons or a day

We celebrate the Love of Him

who washes sins away

© Janet Martin

My friend Alexandra Palmer posted this. So beautiful.

Of Shorelines, Seas and Sailors...some Sonnets

You lean against the silence; deep inside

Your plaintive sigh aches in dawn’s pristine hush

Where colors of a rising, falling tide

Fills winter’s stricken stance with summer’s rush

Tracing the outline of thought’s shadow-land

The bloom and bracken sway in buxom breeze

Along a bank where footprints in its sand

Have washed upon a shore of memories

There is no proof of moments I may seek

But for its whisper gleaming on my cheek

***

I am not discontent; Time has no rules

But one; it takes and gives in the same breath

While hope unravels from its lofty spools

And dodd’ring dream succumbs to its last death

The crimson morning rends the slumb’ring deep

Where faith and fantasy, their duels wage

And we beneath their vigil laugh and weep

Across the twinkle of Time’s vapor stage

Replenishing with virgin hope the stream

Reaching to seize the dreamer from her dream

***

Moment by moment, like a pink platoon

Dawn’s squadron marches to its ordained height

Where gold and azure vertex of high-noon

Drops from its pinnacle into the night

And we, caught twixt its future and the past

Where silences are filled with memory’s sigh

Ponder leviathan moments mercy-cast

Dripping from heaven to the by-and-by

While we glean from its effervescent tide

The drops that form an ocean deep inside

***

The aftermath of moments sweeps a shore

That we are each the lone spectator of

Gazing at life’s bygone forevermore

Fraught with framed fragments of longing and love

Borne in the limbo of mortality

This surge of moments cannot pause or cease

As we, the sailors on its silver sea

Point our prows toward heaven’s release

Recognizing He who holds the cup

Whereon we sail and moment’s tears fill up

© Janet Martin  

 The Lord rewards everyone for their righteousness and faithfulness. 1 Samuel 26;23

This day is climbing with quiet haste
Filled with moments too precious to waste

A Little Rusty

Darling, are you still awake?

And will you venture out with me

Into the tumult of a night

Stark still with frigid clarity

Where breath hangs frozen and our step

Creaks loudly in the bitter cold

The giddy flame upon the hearth

Invites us from our midnight stroll

But we decline its luring grin

To listen to blue solitude

Ignite a fire deep within

Akin to passions of our youth

…darling let’s practice if we can

The thrill of being young again

© Janet~

The Sunday Whirl

Monday Musings while Cross-country Skiing

Life does not ask

From any man

But this; to do

The best he can

***

Fulfillment comes each day we live

Not by what we amass, but give

***

It is not those without visual sight

Who are truly and dubiously blind

But those who seek without delight

For things they never find

***

I searched for joy

And it found me

When I learned to live

Thankfully

***

We all are human

And must admit

That the best of us

Are hardly fit

To point and judge

Of us, the worst

We ought to examine

Ourselves first

***

Sometimes you try to tell me how you feel

Forgive me for not listening

Now, how I long to reach to you and steal

The un-shed tear sadly glistening…

***

Don’t sugar-coat the truth or lies

Both are immune to its disguise

***

Our children are taught

Not just by what they’re told

They learn with keen perception

By what they behold