Hellish Glimpses

…and now she knows

Love no longer glows

With bliss of ignorance

Words, razor-sharp

Have left their scars

There is no self-defense…

...to barricade from other lips

The words that spew in hate

If only somewhere on the air

Perhaps would be a gate

To bar those hellish glimpses

...one can breathe and yet be dead

Slaughtered again, again by words

That never should be said

© Janet Martin

It's Summer

It’s summer and the world is friendlier somehow, it seems

The luxury of fantasy’s fruition kindly beams

In lily-laden landscape and on morning’s dew-drenched slope

Summer empties its pockets where we hoarded our hope

How lovelier the hour in the colors of July

Or kindlier the bower beneath June-blue sanguine sky

With eagerness of children we embrace the filigree

Of summer-sighing leaf-song and its deep-shade luxury

The bivouac once laden with winter-weary lament

Unfetters bolted shutter releasing our discontent

For early dawn is peeking over skylines etched on pink

Who can afford to sleep when summer spills in honeyed ink?

In lush extravagance nature tickles the poet’s pen

A giddy sort of giggle slips from wooded bracken- den

As myriad of minstrels and bloom-happy balladeers

Compose first-class originals from naught but petal-tears

Cold lemonade and sweet tea enjoy popularity

As earth deploys its living-rooms beneath beckoning tree

And where the picnic-table shivered in icy caress

It wears Popsicle-kiss and watermelon happiness

Its summer and the world is friendlier in green and blue

Our to-do lists are pinned to canvases of dirt and dew

And we are not distracted by want’s cold clutter of stuff

Because at last its summer and just living is enough

© Janet Martin

His Poetry

  

Image source; unknown

Wonderful wonder of God’s poetry

Images of His generosity

Unworthy yet without cost He bestows

To our gaze first the bud, then the rose

Beneath our feet, overhead, all around

God’s poetry spills in fathoms unbound

No man can trump Divine God, though he tries

Nature’s plethora stuns and mystifies

Who can define what was born by His word

God poetry leaves mankind humbled and stirred

Summer and winter and all in-between

Russet and silver, gold, blue, umber, green

Better is little with wisdom to see

Than much that blinds us to God’s poetry

Wealth of His wonder wakens us from within

Succors our longing with glimpses of Him

Not always by what our visage can prove

But by His intrinsic whispers of love

Wonderful Wonder of God’s poetry

We its recipient, though unworthy

Lilting and lolling, love-song, lullaby

Filling our senses with, ‘God, who am I

That you should love us so generously

Lavishing lifetimes with your poetry?’

© Janet Martin

On This Side of Then...

On this swift side of Then we do

The best with what we’ve got

Before the After spills its view

In whereabouts of thought

We cannot do a single thing

About tomorrow’s quest

Save, on this side of Then giving

The Now our utter-best

Then is a place we cannot touch

Save in imagination

But ever in our present-clutch

Now pleads its obligation

So, on this side of Then we dream

About Now’s sure fruition

Life’s awesome undertaking streams

In now-to-then ambition

Then ever will succeed the Now

Time’s monochrome unfolding

But, Then depends greatly on how

We use the Now we’re holding

© Janet Martin

Yesterday today was tomorrow. Its Then is Now. We can give tomorrow nothing but our Best Today!

Treasure the Measure...

Treasure the measure of summer’s swift pleasure

For at the mercy of seasons are we

Hours are flowers unfolding in bowers

Spilled out in moments whose breadth none can see

Tarry, then bury the past that will ne’er be

Look where a new day is filling the sky

Older, we shoulder Time’s ethereal boulder

Still, virgin moments quicken their reply

Soundless stampede; need and greed bleed freely

Where we seek blessing in spite of The Curse

Humbly, we stumble and fumble; why grumble?

We’re in this together, for better or worse

So treasure the measure of summer’s swift pleasure

Not as a fool loosely spending Time’s gold

Better, as debtor to One we will weather

By His kind mercy what grace will unfold

© Janet Martin

‘Getting old is hard’, said the brave, silver-haloed warrior and I knew she referred to far more than physical ailment. Life can hold its keenest disappointments until we are old, but its return is a softer and more gracious love for others if we allow grace to work its wonder.