Monday, December 15, 2014

November-Gray December




 Our November was more like December; white
Now December has been for the most part, November gray…

The fog lies long and lower than the treeline by the fence
It lolls upon the sullen lawn in moody dissonance
The far side of the yard is veiled like nature’s mourning bride
Home is a charcoal button on a mist-cloaked countryside

Sight cannot satisfy its wanderlust; where is the sky?
Is it still blue above this mute and morbid lullaby?
Where middle-day is drowsy in silk-muffled filigree;
Time’s gossamer appointments mantled in a weightless sea

Soulful and sorrow-like it sweeps in soundless magnitude
The pastureland is swaddled in a stance meek and subdued
Dusk overtakes the afternoon at three o-clock or four
Earth is a muffled moment-drop on heaven’s ocean floor

© Janet Martin

If The Looking-glass Revealed The Truth...



Oh, if the looking-glass would show us as we truly are
Then we would blush and rush to hide beneath night’s deepest bar
And we would cry aloud, not proud, knowing our need of grace
From Heaven’s One one who gave His Son to save this wretched race

…and we would see Calvary’s tree and those thieves at His side
Would not be nameless but would look a lot like you and I
And if the looking-glass revealed what skin veils like a sheet
Then we would fall upon our knees and kiss Love’s nail-scarred feet

...and our boast would ever be the Love of Jesus Christ
Bethlehem’s Babe who came to be a Lamb of sacrifice
Once and for all; oh, is there any that can out-love He
Who laid His hands beneath the nails and died for you and me?

Yes, if the looking-glass would show us how we really are
Then we would bow and worship mercy’s bright and Morning Star
And if the looking glass revealed more than flesh-face and hand
Then we would love, knowing without God’s grace ah, who would stand?

© Janet Martin
 
 If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
    O Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness,
    that you may be feared. Ps. 130:3-4


May He, Jesus be the One we worship this Christmas season,
May joy not the be the tree, presents or any other reason
But may it be, as we behold Jesus the Christ-child King
An over-flowing gladness the makes heaven's joy-bells ring...


 
  

From This Where Moments Wrest...






Now lays He to the banks of earth
A Thing that none has known
And now we marvel at the birth
Of new hope from God’s throne 

Unfolding like a butterfly
Time's new-born beauty beams
Through the cocoon of midnight sky
It breaks in glory-streams 
 
The beck and call of yesterday
No one can return to
But oh, upon earth’s shoreline splays
A gift from God, brand new

See how He spreads across the sky
From raven deep, dawn’s gold
A morsel of thought’s by-and by
Now trembles in our hold

And all that we can ever plead
From This, where moments wrest
Is to pray God his love to lead
And then give Him our best

© Janet Martin

 Sing praises to the Lord, O you his saints,
    and give thanks to his holy name. 
 For his anger is but for a moment,
    and his favor is for a lifetime.
Weeping may tarry for the night,
    but joy comes with the morning.

Ps.30:4-5

The Way Time Flows



  
(this cute video is quite profound)
Emily and I were talking tonight about how we wish we could keep more memories, some simply fade too fast. So we live in the now, let go of its moment and hold on to its memories until some of those too, fade in life's stream...

Nothing now but memories
That’s the way time flows
Through our fingertips with ease
Falls its fading rose
Lilt of laughter, Kiss good-bye
Itty-bitty tear
Flowing to thought’s sweetheart-sky
…memories, my dear

Once upon a blue bygone
Yester-year was now
There we laid its moments down
In time’s forward flow
Where the pictures that we threw
Soft into its tide
Paint a portrait-avenue
Somewhere deep inside

I can touch you now, my dear
Though long we have lost
Afternoons of yester-year
That loosely we tossed
Without thought into a stream
Rushing to repose
Sometimes life seems but a dream
That’s the way time flows

© Janet Martin


A Fast-freeze Free-fall... to The meaning of it All





What is this thing that steals across the day
With ether slightness none can comprehend
Yet tips the scales of youth to middle age
And grip us with beginnings naught can end?
It rushes where the blush of dreams applaud
But none can feel the torrent of its might
…and in the quelling of its appetite
It melts the veil that wafts twixt man and God
No scalpel can its medium dissect
Nor one speck of spent quantum resurrect

The wink of them turns hours into years
 And flowers into fragments on the brook
As through our clasp its essence disappears
Refurbished with the very thing it took
It fills dawn’s cup with dusk and dusk with dawn
It rends the heart but not the air life breathes
Its all-encompassing free-fall bequeaths
A silent storm of season-succored seas
In half-breath breadth it freezes centuries

What is this thing that leads, not to the end
But to the Great Beginning of it all?
It lilts in microscopic dividend
To that last eon unfathomable
…ten-thousand skies a drop within its girth
What is this thing that stuns imagery
 And whisper-washes ages from the earth
In tiny tick-tock metered symmetry
Ah, momentum of moments; soft you fall
Leading us to the Meaning of it all

© Janet Martin

Sunday, December 14, 2014

The Will of Moments...(a sonnet)



 ...they sent me this picture this morning 'the cooks in the kitchen'. It'sfrom a group of some old, some new friends after a Christmas Dinner we hosted for them yesterday evening. Now its beautiful moments are nothing...but precious memories. (off to peel potatoes and host dinner #2 today) Our friends, home from India are coming for lunch so we are looking forward to what today's moments hold...

The quiet will of moments has its way
The sojourner within its subtle clasp
Endures its offerings of gold and gray
As restless threads slip through our fumbling grasp
Darling, the wind tonight is blue and brusque
It rakes its talons ‘cross the frigid pond
Obliterating the moonbeam on its cusp
Pushing to an intangible beyond
Where summer’s past and future intertwine
As surreal dreams and echoes coalesce
Its boasts of air are neither thine nor mine
We reach in vain for illusion’s caress
While we surrender to the startling touch
Of ticking clocks, of falling flowers and such

The portend of a moment soon is null
Bleeding un-severed, joy and grief’s context
Corralled into a day; when it is full
It scales a phantom gate into the next
Darling, the hour does not reimburse
Its squandered breadth, nor is a glimpse unveiled
Of Time’s extent; this dust-spun universe
Cannot fathom eternity exhaled
Where moments in ethereal magnitude
Will never be; no hour, day or year
Earth’s numbered measure will our thought elude
As we pass from this noon-to-midnight sphere
Across the field the skyline silhouette
Yields to a little season’s pirouette

The bridegroom hungers for his precious bride
But he cannot pluck moments from Time’s clutch
Nor can a mother quell their ceaseless tide
As children scatter from beneath her touch
Darling, the air is charged with sweet suspense
For who can know what loiters in the mist
Of opportunity and recompense
We are young lovers waiting to be kissed
As we, God’s floods of wonderment embrace
Of sunbeam smiling soft against the cheek
Or heaven’s tears in metaphors of grace
Fill us with awe until we cannot speak
Outside a snowflake wafts then disappears
Like moments drifting softly into years

© Janet Martin

The quiet will of moments has its way
The sojourner within its subtle clasp
Endures its offerings of gold and gray
As restless threads slip through our fumbling grasp
Darling, the wind tonight is blue and brusque
It rakes its talons ‘cross the frigid pond
Obliterating the moonbeam on its cusp
Pushing to an intangible beyond
Where summer’s past and future intertwine
As surreal dreams and echoes coalesce
Its boasts of air are neither thine nor mine
We reach in vain for illusion’s caress
While we surrender to the startling touch
Of ticking clocks, of falling flowers and such
The portend of a moment soon is null
Bleeding un-severed, joy and grief’s context
Corralled into a day; when it is full
It scales a phantom gate into the next
Darling, the hour does not reimburse
Its squandered breadth, nor is a glimpse unveiled
Of Time’s extent; this dust-spun universe
Cannot fathom eternity exhaled
Where moments in ethereal magnitude
Will never be; no hour, day or year
Earth’s numbered measure will our thought elude
As we pass from this noon-to-midnight sphere
Across the field the skyline silhouette
Yields to a little season’s pirouette
The bridegroom hungers for his precious bride
But he cannot pluck moments from Time’s clutch
Nor can a mother quell their ceaseless tide
As children scatter from beneath her touch
Darling, the air is charged with sweet suspense
For who can know what loiters in the mist
Of opportunity and recompense
We are young lovers waiting to be kissed
As we, God’s floods of wonderment embrace
Of sunbeam smiling soft against the cheek
Or heaven’s tears in metaphors of grace
Fill us with awe until we cannot speak
Outside a snowflake wafts then disappears
Like moments drifting softly into years
© Janet Martin
- See more at: http://anotherporch.blogspot.ca/2012/12/the-drifting-of-momentsa-sonnet.html#sthash.ZFRrl73U.dpuf