Ah, Thee Who Sends The Rain...

 I'm certain we would all be choosing no rain right now but even as I write this thunder rolls across the deep

and we trust the Lord our way to keep...(yes, the farmers and gardeners and everybody! yes, those in the drought-stricken southwest too)

Ah, Thee who sends the rain

And lowers twilight’s veil

Then at the dawn draws it again

We know Thou wilt not fail

Ah, Thee who tends the air

And sees each private grief

Surely you hear our wordless prayer

When vexed by unbelief

Ah, Thee who discerns thought

And intent of the heart

Still, still you thrill earth’s season-rill

With Thy majestic art

And though Thou knowest we

Fear suffering over sin

Still we arouse Thy sympathy

And Mercy’s beckoning

Ah, Thee who holds the thread

Where flesh and soul divide

Instill faith greater than death’s dread

As Hope is satisfied

© Janet Martin

Contemplating Happiness

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I cannot keep you happy for long

Nor you me

Love, is more than have and hold

This disappoints, you see

For happiness must be three-fold

First God, then you and I

Else we are merely capable

Of expectation’s lie

Darling, how long we live is trite

But we should ask, ‘how well?’

Time’s kaleidoscope of morn to night

Tolls a most awesome bell

We cannot hear but somewhere

Parting lurks, oh may it be

That where two separate at last

Never, oh, never three

Time’s eons throb with love’s allowance

Of laughter and tears

Seasons sob with the advancing

To where Time disappears

Happiness in all its glory

Taunts our wants and woes

Until Heaven fulfills glimpses

Earth's three-fold love bestows

© Janet Martin

Just Like An Afternoon

   

She told me she would read while we walked to make time pass quickly...and the way home seem shorter...

 ...she didn't know that if  I could I would hold on with both hands and dig my feet in to slow down the afternoon and stretch out the miles but its no use; in the tug-of-war with Time, Time always wins! Next year Victoria will be gone with the youth group on Victoria Day weekend, so we wanted to make it a special Mom and Victoria 'last time'. We did:)

Time takes no holiday

How soon an afternoon

Slips into gowns of evening gray

Like May slips into June

The banter of an hour

Distracts us from the truth

Its laughter like a new-born flower

Or prettiness of youth

The purple hyacinth

Blooms wild on yonder slope

Where we explored spring’s labyrinth

Windswept and drenched with hope

Where, but for poetry

No wisp of it remains

Perfection but a fantasy

Of thought-echoed refrains

…where once three girls dashed free

On childhood’s lilac-breeze

Before they disappeared, where dreams

Beckon new memories

Just like an afternoon

Sun-kissed in middle-May

Always the evening comes too soon

And hurries it away

© Janet Martin

Bards of May

How merrily the bards of May

Spill sweetness to earth’s calloused gray

Now shouts the rising sun to earth

Of longing quelled, of glad re-birth

And hearts, mantled with bleak despair

Embrace May-song like answered prayer

How graciously the bards of May

Ease somber filament away

Oh, bonny bliss of green and blue

Of purple kiss and golden hue

We gaze with beggarly delight

On orchard haze of pink and white

How free and fair season’s bequeath

This thing of air; we lie beneath

The lacy arch of wreath-plumed bark

Where noon sprawls high, its gilded arc

A pleasant, poetic disguise

Where Time slips past our half-closed eyes

…as merrily the bards of May

Tease trees and meadow-lands to play

The tune we crave in winter’s grief

Of sighing grass and lilting leaf

Where soon mid-May reality

Is naught but bits of poetry

© Janet Martin

While We Were Waiting...

I would have waited, he told me

Running fingers through Fifty with sighs

Waited for what? I ask him

And he laughs as he replies

…Getting old

‘I turn eighty today’, the woman smiles

As he asks her what life has taught

She says ‘as I look back

Asking what would I change? I realize

A lot’

We cannot deter Time’s one-way

Its ever-forward flight

Bestows new pages of Today

Ah pray, what will we write?

© Janet Martin

Hubby and his co-worker, both 50-ish, met a lady out for breakfast and celebrating her 80^th birthday. She told them she was lying in bed the night before and she asked herself, as she looked back, what she would change if she could in her life, and she realized, a lot!

Jim’s co-worker laughed as he told me this and then said he would have waited to grow old if he had known it would happen so soon!

Wouldn’t we all?!

Beyond Fondest Expectation

Beyond fondest expectation

As we ponder, pray and plead

Though God gives no explanation

He provides our deepest need

Beyond visual discernment

As His wherefore we besot

God prepares, cares for His children

In ways mightier than thought

Beyond vaguest understanding

Though we fall again, again

God abides; love never-ending

Lavishes the sons of men

© Janet Martin

The Most Tender Feelings, Love

The most tender feelings, love

Are cupped where words elude

How does one spell the heart’s full swell

Of humble gratitude?

I love when love replies

In soft, satisfied gaze

And happiness is the caress

Of ordinary days

Be kind, oh sweeping years

And do not brush to naught

Those pictures of every-day love

To gratify my thought

The comfort of farewell

I cannot spell in speech

Or how it spills in half-breath thrills

When you are out of reach

The most tender feelings, love

Evade word’s fraught well-springs

And are best told as we unfold

Life’s ordinary things

© Janet Martin

Sometimes its good to remember that Busy Saturday is a precious gift wrapped in Ordinary! Off to fulfill its 'orders':)

 

Soft-subtle, Like the Touch of Time

Soft-subtle, like the touch of Time

Spring-green transforms the barren scope

And where the landscape dull and brown

Waited, it wears a robe of Hope

We cannot see a moment move

But in the looking back 'tis when

We realize the potence of

Life’s little moments gathered then

Somehow the looking back allows

Us to weigh moments in our hold

Ephemeral powerhouse

Inhale, exhale, gray and gold

Need and greed rival and prove

Not in some monumental WOW

But in moments, our truest love

As touch of Time its truth bestows

How mightily a moment moves

From here to there in soundless sweep

How constantly its passage proves

We have an awesome charge to keep

© Janet Martin

Hubby calls and sort of apologizes for not trying to get a cheaper deal on an article someone has for-sale.

'that's okay. I tell him. I've come to the conclusion it is better to be 'a little more needy' than 'a little more greedy'. Who are we to decide who needs the extra jingle more? ' God looks after our true needs and the rest is BONUS! Thank-you God, for caring about the 'little stuff' in our lives. 

My mixer has been broken for over a month and I saw exactly what I was looking for( a discontinued model) on an on-line buy-and-sell site but the mixer was in Toronto.(1&1/2 hrs away) 'that's okay', said the lady when I told her I would love to buy it but have no idea when I will be there! She told me she would wait and last week-end when we were in Toronto to look at my daughter's apartment we also got the mixer! I can bake again:) The lady told me she was so happy to sell it to the person who said 'I would like the mixer' and not 'I would like a better bargain' and she thanked me for that because she told me she tried to advertise it at a fair 'bargain. I really appreciated her thoughtful words...and I thanked God for caring about little details and allowing us 'breaks' not to fill our own pockets but so we have more to GIVE, not keep. Easier said than done but never too late to try.

Time has such a soft-subtle touch and sometimes it seems in the looking back we see more failure than triumph, but no, each moment is a grace gift, not to wallow or worry, but to worship and withstand! It is through failure and stumble we become wiser and humble...

Happy Friday!