Angels Among Us (a re-post)

 

 This is our 'favorite Aunt Salome'. Because she was born with Down's Syndrome she grew up over and over with all her nieces and nephews. She is 57 and in the advanced stages of Alzheimer. She doesn't know, for the most part who anyone is, but in sudden clear moments flickers of her former, jolly self return. Oh, we love you, Salome.)

They should have shelves,

no, monumental showcases 
burgeoning with trophies and medals

in honor of their services and heroism.

Instead, they are quite obscure,

sorting through heads of cauliflower

or bunches of bananas at the super-market.

They hunch beneath umbrellas,

disappearing through ordinary doorways

to invisible mission-fields.

Who are they?

They are the care-givers

of beautiful special-needs souls

placed into life with afflictions devoid of explanation,

simply need;

the basic, never-ending needs requiring faithful hands

to bathe, feed, teach,

lift, hug, pamper
and clean countless messes.

They are the voices talking,

soothing, praising, singing,

weeping and praying.

They remain,

driven by a law beyond human reasoning

and strengthened by a force beyond human understanding;

Love.

No glory or applause waits for them

at the end of their day,

simply weariness and the promise

that as long as life continues so will need.

And thus they quietly continue,

never seeking adulation

but diligently seeking

hope, patience, strength;

planting joy in gardens

witnessed by God alone.

Beneath their touch broken flowers bloom.

Faithfulness will be their legacy.

Heartache hones their beauty,

astonishing in its rare form

of work-worn hands and tear-tender eyes.

There will never be a hall of fame

for those who teach an autistic child to say mama.

There are no grand-stands

filled with cheering fans

as strong arms steady weak, trembling bodies

endeavoring to take a first step.

There are no banners waving in celebration

because Peter finished a whole serving of applesauce

or Mary learned to read her printed name.

But there are crowns of glory held in waiting,

unfathomable

in the richness of their reward.

Someday God will reach down,

lift these angels from earth

and restore them to Heaven.

‘Well done’, He will declare,

‘you have completed your mission.

You have taught my precious servant-child

to trust fully in me.

Because of you they will receive many rewards

and will hear these blessed words,

‘well done my good and faithful servant.

Enter into the rest prepared for you’

Yes, there truly are angels among us,

teaching God’s children how to love

and leading them ever closer to Him.

Dedicated to all the angels with afflictions too countless to number, and of course, to their beautiful, angels-in-waiting caregivers.

Janet Martin

Due to increased care she needed to be moved to long-term care facility.

 Today I dropped in to see her,

 I held her...and wept.

She stared at me

long and hard,

then she slept.

Forgotten Melodies

 (April's yard echoes with autumn's walnut-leaf percussion)

Last autumn’s leaf

Spirals, soft on the breeze

Returning to rest, lost in time’s russet seas

Slide-show of shadow and sunlight caress

The graveyard of past summer’s stricken tress

And over the dread-locks of winter’s torment

Wandering zephyrs cajole and lament

Budded limbs beckon;

Eager for the sigh

Of leaf-song at midnight’s half-moon lullaby

The last snow recedes to north-shaded inclines

Sadness and gladness together entwines

Ten fingers folded in tender embrace

Where moments employ simply to erase

The thrum of bare feet

Echoes on the still grass

The pond is a window of sun-shadow glass

Where once childish innocence shattered its gleam

Before adolescence lures with ethereal dream

And once more the leaf spirals soft on the breeze

An eighth note in forgotten melodies

© Janet Martin

Belated Thursday Thoughts

The sky, like life...keeps changing. Above it all the changeless One abides. 

Love is only four letters

Speaking everything

That ever matters

***

The whole of life’s sorrow and joy are love

Either in its giving or lack thereof

***

Words are a writer’s best friend and worst enemy.

***

I could not bear to face this day

If God would turn His Love away

***

The sun pulls itself above earth’s dark brink

Painting charcoal highways in burnished pink

We pull ourselves from slumber’s embrace

Treading hope’s offering of grace

***

It is not whether I love you that counts…but how I love you.

***

Dawn spills from wraps of gold and gray

How will we use Love’s gift today?

***

All my longing and all my sighs

Are not hidden from your eyes

And even when skies are not blue

Teach me Lord, to worship you

***

I cannot be thankless, yet trust

I cannot trust and remain thankless

***

To live in fantasy is to die while breathing

  

© Janet Martin

Of Inadequacies

 

Night cannot unravel longing from need

Time cannot cipher the hand from the deed

And mind cannot deftly devoid with thought

The onyx ocean of all that is not

Heartache and hunger and hope intertwine

Like moonlight and rain on the wisteria vine

Darling, the distance between have and hold

Trembles in fathoms where fingertips fold

And word is the pilgrim that humbly implores

Searching the ocean of want for its shores

We’ve held in moments life’s sweet, finite bliss

We’ve borne the torment of its farewell kiss

We’ve stripped the silence and searched its dark vaunt

To glean from its tresses the echoes that taunt

We’ve held each other and danced; long and slow

For parting’s sweet sorrow comes when we let go

Rising and falling, we laugh and we weep

Touching thought-shadows when we cannot sleep

And while all the earth is wrapped in sable silk

We grasp at threads of intangible ilk

Darling, the stuff that weaves thought is enough

The flip-side of longing is beautiful love

The flip-side of love is a longing within

That cannot be met in this flesh-garb of sin

So here in this moment and here in this chair

Love is a torment I’ll willingly bear

Bastion of passion and purposed belief

Bulwark of beautiful, beautiful grief

I hear the night murmur, a somnolent call

‘Together we conquer, alone we fall’

© Janet Martin

Hold Back the Morning...

 

…because this silence hangs weighted upon the night air

With echoes of laughter and doubt and despair

This is the silence of hope’s troubadour

Dull like the cadence of far ocean’s roar

Where rebellion and surrender coalesce

Drenching the midnight with longing’s caress

This is the silence of chimeral grief

Duel twixt fantasy and belief

Where is the bulwark to cradle the sigh?

Threading the ramparts twixt ocean and sky

With only this silence to witness the throe

Of having and holding and then letting go

Hold back the morning; oh, I cannot bear

To suffer this silence in azure-blue air

For I cannot pawn this allotment of bliss

Hold back the dawn with its sweet sanguine kiss

This is the silence of lovers and fools

Drowning in thought’s inexhaustible pools

Janet~

Hold That Wheel...Please?

Poetics Aside Prompt; For today’s prompt, take the phrase “Hold That (Blank),” replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and write the poem. Possible titles include “Hold That Thought,” “Hold That Space,” “Hold That Poem,” or whatever else holds your attention.

Hold that wheel that gently unfurls

Beautiful women over our little girls

Hold that ribbon rushing like the tides

Of spring’s turquoise river as winter subsides

Oh, hold that ruthless rendering of truth

Placing wisdom’s halo over locks of youth

And though we resist it Time deploys its thrill

Startling mortality with its adamant will

Hold that dirge dangling somewhere aloft

Hold that finger so cruel and soft

Hold that moment-thread trickling from the sky

Hold that hour leading to good-by

© Janet Martin

 

Of Fumbling Caresses...a Sonnet

God created the world out of nothing,
and as long as we are nothing, He can make
something out of us. ~Martin Luther~

Moon-crescent dangles above tree-tops where

Night’s phantom fingers strum dawn’s blushing air

Blue and pink chalice tips over the dirt

Cradle of heartache and laughter and hurt

…now the moon fades into rivers of gold

A new day is drawn from Time’s ethereal fold

We touch our step to ephemeral soil

Reach for the hour of tender-sweet toil

We cannot tell what this new day will yield

As over the swell of earth's ocean and field

Daylight expands from night’s onyx abyss

Into human hands of fumbling caress

The unknown ripples; life-waves on earth’s dust

So I reach for the Fingers of One I can trust

© Janet Martin

Beneath the Diguise of Moments

It is not the present immediacy

Of my pondered yes or no

But the shaping of whom you are going to be

That tries my answer so

For in the gathered quick replies

The bud of recompense

Will not remain ‘neath time’s disguise

Of certain consequence

The weight of love’s compassion

Surges full inside of me

For our transient yes-no-moments

Shape the person we will be

© Janet Martin

Sometimes its so easy to just say 'yes, yes, yes,' because at the Time its the easy non-confrontational fix...but this morning I caught myself suddenly pondering a request not because of any harm it would do now, but in how its shapes one's thinking pattern and may numb our discernment twixt wisdom and knowledge of choice and accountability.