Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Ever-new






Dawn threads through wooden harps
And spreads its music sheets
Across the dark where grace imparts
New anthems to Time’s streets

From Heaven’s breath-veiled Gate
New mercies God bestows
Then let His praises saturate
Our wanting, wishing woes

Behold, in robes of gold
Or folds of grays and blues
New orchestral madrigals roll
To ancient avenues

And we of mortal choir
Are behooved to agree
That none but God can tune earth’s sod
With newness faithfully

© Janet Martin

So, after being on the phone for quite a while with a very patient tech-support worker walking me through resetting things we hopefully have found the solution to the internet-connectivity problems we had...

Monday, December 22, 2014

On Learning to Love





We cover love’s aches with soft smiles
And its mistakes with tears
We clad love-hopes with ‘maybe-when’
And thus we cope with…years

We forgive faults with memory-loss
Love keeps no scrolls of wrong
But looks beyond its grief because
In this we can move on

The fantasy of what might be
Trumps all the what-have-beens
Past’s immobile finality
Cannot out-weigh love’s dreams

We cannot exchange Here with There
Nor wish away our lot
All we can do is breathe a prayer
And love with what we’ve got
 

© Janet Martin

The internet is not working well at all!!! It works in sporadic gasps... sorry I can't visit or comment anywhere. If we don't get it fixed before Christmas I wish you all a blessed season of hope, joy and peace.

What Joy of Christmas; This



Do you love receiving cards? I do! ...then as I ponder the messages and look around at all the loneliness, longing and sorrow in spite the hope-joy-peace proclamations and celebration it strikes me that without love; really believing and receiving Love, God's free gift, all true, lasting joy evades us...

What thrill of pleasure in the making of new memories
Untamed measure of moments fall from yon’s hope-spangled seas
And morning soon adorns storehouses of lost yesterdays
As Christmas carols set the hearth of heart-home-fires ablaze

What happy chatter as we decorate the tree with cheer
And reminisce about the swift, dismissal of a year
The touch of words tucked into cards delight and tug at strings
Which suddenly are all a-tune with sentimental things

What wonder is revived as we consider Christ, the King
Whom God sent as a little Child eternal hope to bring
Not in glitter of tinsel or in Christmas trees or trim
But to the hearts of everyone who will believe in Him

This is the joy of Christmas; not the presents or the treats
But love; it warms each wish we send with heaven’s sweetest sweets
…without love hope and joy and peace cannot be reconciled
God, help us find the love You sent in that First Christmas Child

© Janet Martin

Sunday, December 21, 2014

December Postcard




The lane-way and the highway and the trail to wood and dale
The evergreen and cottage scene and silver-scripted vale
Portray the winsome long ago; of younger fields and fells
And almost we can hear the one-horse-sleigh and jingle bells

The blue of dusk descends at dawn tinting hill-scape and yard
Where ambiance of Christmas-past nurture’s nature’s post card
Of white-capped hush and fleece-wrapped bush; of frost-frothed fallow-sea
How tender-soft the Artist brushes gilded reverie

Grand isles of May and merger of green-gold slumber beneath
A sweeping surge of diamond-splurge, holly and Christmas wreath
Out where the summer-garden courted laughing, lounging hours
Its single boast is sported in boreal, snow-flake flowers

The modern girth of tortured earth is tucked in solitude
As winter spills its merry mirth in childhood vim renewed
And glad lad hails the sweet regale where heaven’s chattering
Covers the floor of mead and moor with down of angel wing

The bronze of autumn-languor spills its final crinkled fronds
Save for the long-stemmed teasel or the cattail curtailed ponds
And where the coveted romance of youth and spring entice
A keener beauty spins its gossamer of snow and ice

We probe the dying ember; set the polished pot to boil
A morning in December soothes the tedium of toil
With ginger tea in hand we gaze across earth’s frozen swells
Where almost we can hear the one-horse-sleigh and jingle-bells

© Janet Martin


The lane-way and the highway and the trail to wood and dale
The evergreen and cottage scene and silver-scripted vale
Portray the winsome long ago; of younger fields and fells
And almost we can hear the one-horse-sleigh and jingle bells
The blue of dusk descends at dawn tinting hill-scape and yard
Where ambiance of Christmas-past nurture’s nature’s post card
Of white-capped hush and fleece-wrapped bush; of frost-frothed fallow-sea
How tender-soft the Artist brushes gilded reverie
Grand isles of May and merger of green-gold slumber beneath
A sweeping surge of diamond-splurge, holly and Christmas wreath
Out where the summer-garden courted laughing, lounging hours
Its single boast is sported in boreal, snow-flake flowers
The modern girth of tortured earth is tucked in solitude
As winter spills its merry mirth in childhood vim renewed
And glad lad hails the sweet regale where heaven’s chattering
Covers the floor of mead and moor with down of angel wing
The bronze of autumn-languor spills its final crinkled fronds
Save for the long-stemmed teasel or the cattail curtailed ponds
And where the coveted romance of youth and spring entice
A keener beauty spins its gossamer of snow and ice
We probe the dying ember; set the polished pot to boil
A morning in December soothes the tedium of toil
With ginger tea in hand we gaze across earth’s frozen swells
Where almost we can hear the one-horse-sleigh and jingle-bells
© Janet Martin
- See more at: http://anotherporch.blogspot.ca/search/label/winter%20poem#sthash.60G4ZHoy.dpuf

Saturday, December 20, 2014

What?





Lo, what breaks on dawn’s pristine shores?
And lo, what shakes the sod?
What pours from heaven’s far-flung doors?
Ah, this; the grace of God

Lo, what urges us yet to trust?
In spite of hearts weight-shod
What satisfies this creature-dust?
Ah this; the love of God

© Janet Martin

 Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. Lam.3:22