Momentous Affair

Oh, Time insists on taking from us what we cannot keep,

Darling, darling what tug-of-warring this, its wake and sleep

Where none can hasten bud nor return petals to its fold

They scatter to life’s paths in aftermaths of have-and-hold

Time demands from hands and hearts and minds soft intertwined

Affectations of bravery; slavery to clocks combined

With stalwart resistance to the bloodless insistence of

Seasons; Its reasons masquerading as longing and love

Our infidelity to good intent is nothing new

Darling, darling, let’s try again for what more can we do

Than take that which remains and break the chains of fear and doubt

Because so much of what time takes we learn to live without

For Time insists on taking what no one can lay hold on

Its winnowing of moments strings together hither-yon

And we are powerless to intercede; the greed of air

Drinks afternoons and flowers in time’s momentous affair

Darling, darling then hold me close but do not fence me in
Soon, soon the afternoon will turn into morning again
Where living's art of hand in hand and heart to heart entwine
To try to satisfy the hunger of this Thing called Time

© Janet Martin

I haven't posted this song in a while...:)

Finding My Mind...Wandering

I’m a day late with Thursday’s wikem. Thank-you Sasha, for the weekly inspiration! 

A mind /ˈmaɪnd/ is the set of cognitive faculties that enables consciousness, perception, thinking, judgement, and memory—a characteristic of humans, but which also may apply to other life forms

 Wikipedia

The trees are humming my favorite song

And I am trying to follow along

For in its new-born-green-leaf melody

My mind turns both friend and enemy

Letting me linger while letting me down

Fleet-fingered vortex vexing mortal crown

Keeping enough to let me know the rest

Somehow got lost in life’s juggle and jest

Where, like a clenched fist Thought tries to hold on

As time inhales and exhales, dusk, then dawn

While ever filling archives of the mind

Scattering pieces that I cannot find

But just now, when the blue breeze ran its grin

Over leaves, like Green-sleeves on a violin

...I heard a melody stirred in its twirl

Of half-woman and half yesterday’s girl

And I am inclined to allow my mind

To look for the pieces that it cannot find

Because, quite frankly, I find that my mind

Is a bit like a dandelion in the wind...

© Janet Martin

Mantra on May-green...

May-green rushes like an emerald ocean

Over earth’s trestles of umber and gray

Burgeoning rivers without sound or motion

Waken a wonder-world long held at bay

Now every limb is a hymn of sighed pleasure

Shush-shushing croon tunes earth’s blue-rafter room

Now every hill is a vault filled with treasure

Eager to spill its full measure in bloom

May-green surges to where air-eons merge

With verdant shorelines soft touching its sky

Miser and merchant cannot own the splurge

Rendered by nature to each passerby

Splendor indulges earth’s common bulges

Beauty and duty a stunning alloy

Merry the mantra as dark divulges

May-morning mercy-streams singing with joy

How does one spell with a quill such pure wonder?

How, from a crypt that seems stripped of all life

Can landscapes thunder with May-greenest plunder

Leaping from slumber to grace human strife?

Oh, it compels us to give God glory

No one on earth can boast power as this

Where May-green opens a new summer story

Ravishing earth with new-birth’s holy kiss

© Janet Martin 

I  just finished typing the word 'joy' at the end of the second stanza when sounds of ‘hoy, whoa!!’ drifted over May-green, through the window-screen and what should before my wondering eyes appear but a herd of cattle dashing, as giddy as rebels crashing a garden-party… and they did! Straight through my garden they thundered and one, feeling especially athletic sailed over the rail-fence barricade, the rest of more matronly endowment plundered through the fence after him with one clueless housewife giving chase!(I should have stayed in the house because they immediately bolted when they saw Miss Bed-head come a-flyin')

They are now in the process of corralling them in a neighbor’s field. Trying morning for a farmer.

But For God

Not for fame or fortune

Should we spend our days

But for God the Father

Who deserves all praise

Not for fickle riches

That this world endows

But for God who gives us

That which He allows

Not for adulation

Of our fellow-men

But for God; His glory

Forevermore, amen

© Janet Martin

Hard To Hold...

How momentary is all this, I think, 

as the apple-blossoms scatter like petal-snow, 

...as leaves lose their 'first-gold, hard to hold'...

How momentary this,

The bliss of bud unfurled

In sun and sorrow-kiss

To time’s four-season world

How momentary all

Earth’s sprawling mezzanine

Where creature-grief is small

In light of Hope’s Unseen

How momentary light

And dark of night exchange

Their hierarchy, where sight

And Belief are estranged

How momentary time

The pantomime of clocks

Leads to the nearing chime

Of That which death unlocks

© Janet Martin

Treasures in Jars of Clay

…Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

2 Cor.4:16-18