In This Realm of Existence...

Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the LORD, and depart from evil. Prov. 3:7

Where morning rouses from God, mercy kissed

Where He has overlaid valleys with mist

Where grace unfettered extends what is

What will we do with it?

Where we are granted fresh sun-shadow bowers

Where seasons spill in if-God-so-wills hours

Where we are placed by His care amidst flowers

What will we do with it?

Where countryside touts its green-to-gold girth

Where harvest sprouts from seeds tendered to earth

Where heaven shouts with proof of new day’s birth

What will we do with it?

What will we do with this gift we call Day?

What will we do as it drift-drifts away?

What will we do, oh, and what will we say

When God asks what we did with it?

© Janet Martin

That Kind of Day...

It was a happy kind of day…

The kind made complete

by ‘he did/ said this!’

and ‘no, I didn’t!’ kerfuffles

common to love of brothers.

It was rain

wrapping its plush strain ‘round a little house

where strawberries became jam,

Summer sealed in ruby shimmers

for winter morning toast.

It was heaven-splashes

in wild-bloom rivers

Running rampant in ditches

It was ride-ride-a-horsey all the way to town...

And’ budding Picasso’ pictures

It was the sort of poetry

That makes a mother’s heart sing

For joy as she tends home fires

Lest by neglect, all that remains

Are embers

© Janet Martin

It was also a day (like most days right now) of SLOW-to NO internet...

Who Will Hear Us Then?

click on image to enlarge

If we sin against man to man

A barrister will plead our case

But oh, if we sin against God

And scorn redemption’s saving grace

Then who will for our good entreat?

Or save us from Death’s judgement seat

If we, without care for God’s Word

That He preserves from age to age

So that by Him, man’s hearts are stirred

If we dare to ignore its page

This love-letter from God to us

How dare we die… without Jesus?

If we choose ignorance, what then?

If we reject the cross, blood-stained

And He who gave His Life thereon

So that Death’s hell could be contained

Oh, tell me, who will plead our cause

Or intercede, without Jesus?

© Janet Martin

 If someone sins against a man, God will mediate for him, but if someone sins against the LORD, who can intercede for him?” 1 Sam.2:25

Way To Live

Snared sea-song spills to green-sheen hills where reaching corn-rows blow

And chamomile gilds ditches like drained vials of early snow

Queen Ann’s Lace graces fence-lines, streams in lavish white-frothed swoon

That rushes through lush underbrush and hush of summer-noon

The doorway to For-nevermore is ethereal, yet rife

With flower-gardens; metaphors of ‘what is a man’s life?’

The wind lolls, low and slowly in a languid serenade

Across wheat fields a-ripple like a golden-stippled lake

Those days that long we longed for are unchained; we are half-scared

To run too fast or walk too slow on this that none have snared

Of lupine-lay and fresh-mown hay and clover-mead; bare feet

Skimming the sluggish creek that loiters 'mongst pale meadow-sweet

The clock opens the locks that kept a world of dreams on hold

Anticipation yields its fruit in zinnia, marigold

And lest we miss the best that life and summer have to give

We vow to find a slower, sweeter, kinder way to live

© Janet Martin

Of Then-shaped Memories...

(they were here;-)

I try to picture him (my Uncle Abner) as my eyes travel over each face at the kitchen table; the real- life laughter and chatter, the eager appetites, life's laughing-love moments that once were his as well. But now he sits at his table alone save for *his wife’s picture inducing precious memories…and tears.

I draw Now’s precious moments in then pour them out in prayer for him.

We draw life’s little moments in

A humble quaff of grace

Of tender tear and gladsome grin

As now-then interlace

We live-laugh-learn; the brink of When

Trembles beneath our touch

As moments slip from Now to Then

In pictures framed with love

Small endings and beginnings flow

In seamless intercourse

Life’s high and low and hold-let-go

Caught in its subtle force

And looking back upon birth-deaths  

That flowed from When to Now

To Then can steal our very breath

And startle us somehow

It keens the awe of all we hold

Now; living’s lavish lease

Of moments poured into a mold

Of Then-shaped memories

© Janet Martin

*little did they know that the photos taken the day before she passed away would become so precious so soon! So let's take or make 'pictures';
 Lots of them!