Life is More Than Light Cajoling...

 Around here the trees have suddenly burst into bloom and life seems 'refreshed' but...

Life is more than light cajoling

Night to morning, morn to night

It is more than moments rolling

In Time’s tireless tick-tock flight

Life is more than bitty seasons

Spilling wonder to our gaze

More than Reason’s futile reasons

To annul our foolish ways

Life, for all its slip and stumbling

Life for all its moment-boast

Is more than a faith-fear fumbling

Nor the grave its uttermost

It is more than nature’s showcase

More than yearning shaped in years

It is not a road to no-place

As its last mile disappears

Life is mercy’s grand enrollment

To a roster, Jesus-bound

For He suffered our atonement

Therefore life is holy ground

....and we are Love’s blood-bought children

Not bound for some dead-end goal

We are dust-to-dust creation

Harboring an ageless soul

Therefore life is like a pathway

Time, its sweep of sky and sod

Death, the awful, awesome gateway

Leading to the throne of God

© Janet Martin

Where Plain Duty Lies

 Dawn excites the morning skies where a world of Duty lies, Pray, before its memories drift, oh, we do not waste this gift!

Sometimes, where my plain Duty lay

I turned my head the other way

And whispered words with pretty eyes

Believing my self-wrought disguise

Declining love’s soul-surgery

Of patient humility

…but I could never bar the guilt

That mocked me beneath night’s quilt

Or pretend away truth’s stealth

Unable to fool myself

For the key to happy living

Lies not in getting, but giving

Somewhere mercy’s benefactor

Quiets accusation’s actor

Though, like Peter I denied

Love’s plain Duty, grace replied

Replenishing life’s sin-stained awning

With a gift of faultless dawning

Today, where my plain Duty lies

Pray I do not close my eyes

Nor seek to absolve its tug

With some fantasy I hug

Lord, this day help me to prove

The meek mission of true love

© Janet Martin

 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. 1 Cor.3:13

Vapor-regale...

This day gently tethered by Duty and dream

Dissipates; with it its marvel and muse

No second chance to replenish its dues

Ethereal frigate on Time’s vapor stream

Filling the night with farewells’ fond requiem

Once upon childhood we thought not of years

For Time was a gondola drifting at ease

And we were quite eager for wide open seas

Oblivious to how soon Time disappears

Caught on its ripple of laughter and tears

Silver-mist schooner, soft swiftly you sail

Bound for a shoreline where Time will abort

And all we know is God waits at its port

Where now we lean to peer over the rail

Grasping at droplets of vapor-regale

© Janet Martin

It's late but I wanted to post a little something to try out our new computer after the old one died, suddenly; now we are up and running again.

Hope you all had a happy Saturday.

Poised on the Brink of a Poem

Poised on the brink of a poem, my love

Somehow your touch on my thought

Stirs me to reach past the ache of farewell

Back to a place memory-wrought

What is the color of loneliness, love

Is it the shade of a breeze

Rising and falling, a phantom baton

Strumming the night-ridden seas

Is it the whisper of what-once-had-been

Rousing both wonder and want

Tipping a scale bent with laughter and grief

Painting thought’s walls with its taunt

How is it that ink curlicues can compose

Harmonies sweet and surreal

Cupping the echo of living’s adieus

Where only thought-touch can feel

Masterpiece moments re-shaped into word

Never do justice and yet

Somehow a memory secured in a poem

Helps me to never forget

Someday I'll take the piece still in my clasp

Though now the music of home

Seems quite ordinary, I know I exist

Poised on the brink of a poem

© Janet Martin

No Weather in Heaven

We thank Thee Lord that there is no weather in Heaven

No dark sky, no morning sun

but only forever the Lord God's full glory

on and on and on...

Today the rain falls, the sun rises

and everyone suffers, enjoys equally

the same weather, but in Heaven

only the believer will be

In Heaven seasons will flee away

...no need for rain, no drought or storm

To test the faith, faith will be sight

And sight forever Christ the Lord

Janet~

I was ready to hang out a long line of laundry when the sun disappeared behind low, dull sky and now it looks like it might rain...again.

You Love Us Still

How oft we scorn Thy nail-scarred Hand

Because we do not understand

Thy faultless thought or perfect will

Yet, oh, my Lord, You love us still

You lay before our thankless eyes

Thy glory, glimpsed in waking skies

Over the earth Thy mercies spill

For, oh my Lord, You love us still

Did ever such a love before

To hearts of everyone implore?

Your grace forgives sin’s vilest ill

Because oh Lord, you love us still

While we showcase pathetic boast

Claiming Thy throne to raise a toast

Mindless from whence life’s blessings spill

You see, yet choose to love us still

Oh, patient Father, Keeper, Friend

How oft you hear our lips pretend

While you behold the heart; evil

Yet, oh my Lord, you love us still

Then, stir in us a purer want

Greater than human nature’s taunt

So that we may Thy call fulfill

Remembering You love us still

 ...and should we gaze where footsteps slip

Return us to Thy fellowship

Pouring in us hope's glad refill

For oh my Lord, You love us still

© Janet Martin

Of Swatch of Sod and Sweep of Sky

We splash across earth’s waking green

Past-present-future caught between

A swatch of sod and sweep of sky

Its palette pleasant to the eye

In constant marvel, life and death

Are juxtaposed in every breath

And soon where blooming bud was lent

The limb is gnarled and heavy-bent

Time’s draught of moments takes its toll

Where we are all piece of a whole

Greater than thought or touch and taste

Ere dust to dust retrieves its waste

Freedom; life’s greatest blessedness

Nor for greed’s wanton lawlessness

But as we grasp its worth we see

A sacred, elemental key

…Responsibility and Rule

Not for the faint of heart or fool

We yearn with clear and earnest eyes

To satisfy Time’s moment-prize

With more than dust of darling dreams

Or wanderlust-betaken schemes

For surely life is more than breath

To lead us to eternal death

We splash across earth’s waking green

Toward a Line, sure yet Unseen

Of tick-tock trampling underfoot

The miles transporting us to It

Time’s sweep of sky and swatch of sod

Life’s little highway back to God

© Janet Martin

I am reading through Peter Marshall’s sermons, dumbfounded by their simplicity and depth and timeless relevance…It is little wonder that the loss of his voice and verve were deeply mourned. Here, a small excerpt...

Then, When We Sleep to Wake...

Then, when we sleep to wake and when we wake never to sleep

When the Unknown is gone and no more tears remain to weep

Then we shall understand that which we sought to know before

As Time yields to the Absolute of God’s forevermore

Then, when Hope is exchanged for Home and Home is hope fulfilled

When we have heard that final ‘Come’ as Death’s dark sea is stilled

Then, when the Mystery of soul and spirit are revealed

How worth it all is every grief as every grief is healed

Then, when at last faith becomes sight, sight absolves mortal strife

As death becomes a stepping-stone to everlasting life

And Time’s defenseless shadow fades into Love’s dauntless deep

Then, when we sleep to wake and when we wake never to sleep

© Janet Martin

Because, at the end of it all Reality abides; the sole/soul reason for conception, birth, death to life. We should live every day and seek to remember to never forget...Time is perishable and then we must all put on the Imperishable...