If We Must...

Perhaps it would be better not to be a writer, but if you must, then write. If it all feels helpless, if that famous ‘inspiration’ will not come, write. If you are a genius, you’ll make your own rules, but if not—and the odds are against it—go to your desk, no matter what your mood, face the icy challenge of the paper—write.

~ J.B. Priestly

If we must…and yes, it seems we must

Persuade into a pen thought’s scraped from dust

Or siphoned from the air, life’s filigree

Of moment quick-fall sealed in poetry

The care of circumstance cleaves to our skin

Seeking to weigh our hands with living’s din

And yet, it seems we’re driven to a stage

Reserved for suffering with pen and page

We paper rooms with echoes; silence swells

With notes the aching throat and heart regales

But restless is that ever-thirsting yen

Until we fill and spill the poet’s pen

If we must…and yes, it seems we must

Spell out thought’s burning, yearning wanderlust

Oh wretched, blessed bliss to beggars born

To live somewhere twixt pulse and parchment torn

© Janet Martin

Write while the heat is in you. … The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with.

~ Henry David Thoreau

Resting Place

 

In greater, gentler hands

Our little life is held

Therefore we need not fear nor fret

As sands and seasons meld

Beyond our craving clutch

The numbering of days

Is cradled in a Father’s touch

And guarded ‘neath His gaze

Ah, blessed resting place

Beneath this turbid clime

Abides in unwavering grace

The hand that measures Time

© Janet Martin

Someone just asked about my dad and I told her he was moved out of ICU yesterday but they are keeping close watch on a blood clot in his lungs (the reason he can’t get the oxygen he needs). I’m glad he is held in Hands much bigger than ours.

On Looking Back...

Heart-pangs of pain and pleasure clash

For feet can never run

To touch once more the gilded sash

Of past that time has spun

How subtle is the silver sweep

Of moments as they flow

Futile the fold of fist to keep

What Time cannot bestow

…but every now and then it seems

We wander down its track

To linger in its lost daydreams

As we stand, looking back

The way of life runs ever to

The setting of the sun

No returning to exchange hues

Of day when it is done

Time’s moment-mercy ruthlessly

Inhales life’s quickened hour

Reminding us mortality

Is brief as grass or flower

The trails of retrospect compete

With echoes fierce and tender

See how the dueling bittersweet

Falls in sun-shadow splendor

Heart pangs of pain and pleasure merge

A surge of want and wonder

Yet even now new moments splurge

To satisfy Time's hunger

© Janet Martin

O memory! Thou midway world

‘Twixt earth and paradise

Where things decayed and loved ones lost

In dreamy shadows rise 

Abraham Lincoln…from the poem Memory

February Fantasies...(tweaked re-post from a year ago today)

It would be fine to wander and squander

A dew-drenched, daisy-strewn dazzling new day

And fritter the glitter of freshly-hung moments

Into the nonchalant meadows of May

It would be grand to guilt-freely amble

Through giddy violet-for-get-me-not dell

Heedless of hours wielding a grim gavel

Over the vagrant and fragrant spring swell

It would be splendid to soak in sun-puddles

Teased by a zephyr with sassy-sweet mouth

Splashed with potion wrought by April’s ocean

Dancing with vagabond winds from the south

It would be sweet to languish in bare feet

Appeasing and pleasing fancy’s wanderlust

With treasure of pleasure in middle-May measure

Teasing our traipsing through daydreams of dust

It would be thrilling if mornings were willing

To pause in the spilling of Jack Frosted glow

Then dangle a spangle of spring-ribbon tangles

Or float on the froth of pink apple-bloom snow

Somewhere the splendor of buds, buxom, tender

Startles the drifter on his footloose way

We cannot hurry winter’s fretting flurry

Every February must first have its day

© Janet Martin

Of Lines, Learning and Loving

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Prov 22:6

There is a line we cannot see

Dividing weak from strong

It is a making, breaking thread

That line twixt right and wrong

...and every little boy and girl

Should earnestly be taught

About the line that first unfurls

Somewhere within our thought

Temptation is a wily chain

It dangles easily

Easing our feet across that main

Twixt right and wrong, you see

There is a line ignored by fools

And reverenced by wise

It runs a firm unbending rule

Between God's truth and lies

Pity the child who is not shown

Humble obedience

But must discover all alone

The road to consequence

Love teaches, trains and motivates

With Discipline's kind coach

For right and wrong are more than traits

Earning praise or reproach

The nature we are born with yearns

For pleasant things and fine

Blessed and best is He who learns

The truth about this line

...for this line runs along life's road

Between safety and snare

And life is more than bad or good

Oh traveler; beware

 Janet Martin

A building needs a foundation to stand,
A tree needs roots.
What happens to a child if we take both root and foundation away?

Anticipation

Someday, not very far away

As we recall the hours

We’ll smile as happily we say,

‘Today I planted flowers’

© Janet Martin

Mercy's Perpetual Providence

‘If I could turn back time’, she said

‘I’d return to that place’

But moments do not reimburse

Or barter with their grace

Mercy’s perpetual providence

Moments; brief yet benign

And only in our looking back

Do we see their design

How miniscule the offering seems

In tick-tock allotment

How easily Time spills its reams

Without acknowledgement

But oh, the tempo of that tide

When gathered in the past

Returns oft to remind us how

Moments slip by so fast

‘If I could turn back time’, she said

‘I’d return to that place’

Oh, treasure carefully the Now

Ere new moments give chase

© Janet Martin

My daughter lost a friend she knew briefly and oh, so dearly! They counseled together at camp for 3 weeks and kept in touch through letters. Yesterday this girl’s life of up-hill moments ended tragically and far too soon!

In her Facebook tribute to Jess, Melissa used the words, ‘if I could turn back Time and return to that place’…

This poem spoke to me today...

Sometime

May Riley Smith (1842?–1927)

SOMETIME, when all life’s lessons have been learned,
And sun and stars forevermore have set,
The things which our weak judgments here have spurned,
The things o’er which we grieved with lashes wet,
Will flash before us, out of life’s dark night,
As stars shine most in deeper tints of blue;
And we shall see how all God’s plans are right,
And how what seems reproof was love most true.
And we shall see how, while we frown and sigh,
God’s plans go on as best for you and me;
How, when we called, he heeded not our cry,
Because his wisdom to the end could see.
And e’en as prudent parents disallow
Too much of sweet to craving babyhood,
So God, perhaps, is keeping from us now
Life’s sweetest things, because it seemeth good.
And if sometimes, commingled with life’s wine,
We find the wormwood, and rebel and shrink,
Be sure a wiser hand than yours or mine
Pours out this potion for our lips to drink.
And if some friend we love is lying low,
Where human kisses cannot reach his face,
Oh, do not blame the loving Father so,
But wear your sorrow with obedient grace!
And you shall shortly know that lengthened breath
Is not the sweetest gift God sends his friend,
And that, sometimes, the sable pall of death
Conceals the fairest bloom his love can send.
If we could push ajar the gates of life,
And stand within, and all God’s workings see,
We could interpret all this doubt and strife,
And for each mystery could find a key.
But not to-day. Then be content, poor heart!
God’s plans like lilies pure and white unfold.
We must not tear the close-shut leaves apart,
Time will reveal the calyxes of gold.
And if, through patient toil, we reach the land
Where tired feet, with sandals loosed, may rest,
When we shall clearly know and understand,
I think that we will say, “God knew the best!”

Air-brushed Perfection

 After the potpourri of weather we had at the end of last week one can ski for literally miles on works of unframed art!

How fondly He must move the sky

To know what thus ensues

As wind and rain and snow and sun

Earth’s dormant dell imbues

This canvas blooms with raw design

Original and rare

Where elements and God align

His brush, nothing but air

He startles slopes with naught but thought

Should I remove my shoes?

To tread these master-pieces wrought

Of silvers, whites and blues?

We cannot dream such works as this…

Free-falling filigree

In swirling, twirling twist of mist

Earth touts His majesty

…and we like daily strangers come

To marvel at His thought

Where handiwork of season-song

Spills to man’s plebeian plot

Our labor, clad with common care

Dons a divine purport

We serve the One who moves the air

In grand, un-fathomed art

© Janet Martin