Leaving September Behind...

September seems like a bit of a blur to me...sigh.

But a good sigh because the garden yielded bumper-crops resulting in

much summer preserved in jars waiting to be poured out

in purples, greens, reds and gold while

winter rages white and blue:)

While blue skies lolled over gold of mulled summer

And flowers unfolded their final hurrahs

Near fence-lines, swaddled in wild-grape vine ardor

September faded into The Thing That Was

While we laughed, gathering gifts from the garden

Drifting like busy bees from bloom to bloom

Hours harvested without pause or pardon

Present pinnacles to Past’s gossamer Tomb

While we were busy, near-dizzy with Duty

Learning the art of joy laced through with grief

Clocks gleaned the green sheen from hulled moment-beauty

Scattering summer in each petal and leaf

While, with honest glances we noticed tides shifting

While we pretended that we didn’t mind

Time strewed the yard with culled frigates soft-drifting

Leaving September and summer behind

© Janet Martin

This...a But By the Grace of God Matter

Across This Avenue where blue commands night’s ebbing surge

The Edict of Spent Ages and Sages in Training merge

And those who recognize This grapple with the undertow

Of what Eons have proven yet so many do not know

Because truth is distorted by the wily ways of Want

Resulting in Unconsciousness of Hades lawless taunt

As Right and Wrong are twisted; life a godless game of chance

Our children and their children doomed by Present Ignorance

Across This sweep of purple-misted centuries-deep dust

Religion and Discipleship spar; law argues with trust

And lust is oft mistaken for love; Love misunderstood

As many shun The Hand encrusted with Redemption-blood

Choosing upon This Way of No Escape that loathsome lie

‘That there is no accounting with Holy God when we die’

And so His Name is uttered in the context of a curse

Instead of Awed Awareness of the love of God for us

This neighborhood of human flesh is doomed; we till death’s dross

Man’s dust-to-dust appointments riddle earth where all is loss

Save This; the Promise of Inheritance we will receive

If with trite heart and soul we testify, God, I believe

But oh, This Present Generation find no pleasure in

Remembering the Creator who pardons every sin

Choosing instead The Convoluted Labyrinth of Sod

And dances with a Serpent rather than the love of God

This is the day the Lord has made, no mortal mind usurps

Omnipotent Authority; He rules Heaven and earth

Thus, all that we lay claim to on this Avenue of Laud

Is Rust Offspring and Temporal Lending to us from God

For naked we came to this world; naked we will desert

Only mankind’s Immortal Soul survives This House of Dirt

Where we would all be drunk with tears of fear, save for God’s grace

And this; A Present Ignorance pervading human race

© Janet Martin

a good song here...

 Inspired by this poem with a multitude of breath-stealing phrases...

After I wrote This I wished I would have attempted the rhyme-scheme of the poem

that inspired it but words and rhythms seem to have a will of their own as well:)

Of Time's Waning Ways...

 God spreads for eyes, a feast, upon earth's banquet table...

The waning way of orchards dapples burnished branch with red

Its weans the slope of verdant sheen where summer banter rolled

Across the afternoon of bloom-buttoned vesture soft-shed

As hope adapts to days where autumn’s waning ways unfold

Dawn drapes landscapes with purple mist; it kindles green with gold

Future-present-to-past weds threads into Thought- woven art

Upon earth’s little ledge where sedge and hedge turn we behold

The waning way of seasons from the Poet of the heart

‘Be still and know that I am God’, the very lands bequeath

Submission where the ordinance of Providence spills seed

And on this holy ground we tread while overhead, beneath

The Hand that paints the waning ways of Time still fills its need

…and mankind’s mouth, while we look north to south or west to east

Drips with meek ‘my, oh, my’; we speak with tears upon the face

That in the waning ways of time God spreads for eyes, a feast

Upon earth's banquet table groaning with Amazing Grace

© Janet Martin

All the way to and from church this morning I found myself my-oh-mying over the beauty of the earth...

Precious Gold

 We spent a whole Precious-gold day in the garden; its moments a perpetual falling away into Yesterday

On its trapeze the sun with ease swung over trees to lowered west

And there it fell, the air a bell where echoes toll in human breast

For as it pealed it softly sealed the Here and Now beneath a brim

Of mist and musk and dew and dusk, its slumber swathed in vesper-hymn

Beyond the fond remembrances where dawn dissolved what evolved, veiled

Then filtered through man’s say-and-do on avenues with grace regaled

The cup filled up with Mystery spilled; History expands its fold

On far-off bars soldered with stars we gazed at remnant splays of gold

That No Man’s Land is fraught with thought, yet we cannot linger too long

For soon the sun on its trapeze will tease dark seas with morning-song

Where a new stage is set, time’s page from age to age mercy-renewed

Yesterday will not pass again but strums the dark with dawn’s prelude

© Janet Martin

 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Heb. 13:8

Mastering Marriage (A re-run:)

In the on-going art of learning to co-exist I have learned that hubby will hang his hat where-so-ever he pleases, and he will ever-so-thoroughly enjoy every evil eye I toss his way as I return it to the hooks inside the door intended for...HATS!

Love’s culmination of differences

Must learn to co-exist

Its Mr.’s and its Mrs.’s

Experiments of risk

Back when we knew it all; naive

To all we didn’t know

It was so easy to believe

In what we thought was so

But Time rolls out its welcome mat

Where love cannot pretend

So love becomes an acrobat

Learning to stretch and bend

And love becomes forgetful

For how else can it usurp

With heavy heart and head full

Of its insult and its hurt?

Back on youth’s dream-paved Easy streets

Answers exceeded years

Before we bore selfish defeats

And wore a lover’s tears

Before we understood that we

Will never understand

Each other quite as perfectly

As once, perhaps, we planned

…so love culminates differences

And learns to co-exist

Its Mr.’s and its Mrs.’s

Willing to take its risk

© Janet Martin

Happy 52nd Anniversary to my parents.

Happy Wedding Day to my nephew!

Here comes the bride

All starry-eyed

Oh, pray God spills time's jars

In many

years of happiness

And never snuffs love's stars

Of Daybreaks and Nightfalls...

The fabric of new day unfolds from heaven’s waning hem

And teases the dark edge of night with gold; its diadem

Dissolves where morning crowns the infancy of what will be

On morrow’s birth, Lord willing, yesterday and History

We, offspring of God’s mercy, (though it seems we oft forget)

Traverse its tide of moments and we cannot rush ahead

Or decline invitations hung upon dawn’s beaming tress

Day breaks, night falls; we rend time’s halls for hope and happiness

The rubric of a lifetime fits in these two elements

The quadrille of seasons entices us to brave its dance

Day breaks, night falls, and in between the birth and death of dates

We push against the odds, pursuing what love celebrates

Time traipses through the stars then falls beneath our learning touch

Fear-stricken and love-smitten we admit there is too much

That we cannot control so we console the circuit of

Daybreak-nightfall with prayer then hold the hands of those we love

Day breaks the sky with what has never been like this before

A virgin sheaf of moments spills from God's will to earth's shore

And (though it seems we oft forget) Time begets holy calls

That we should answer full and well before night's dark cloth falls

© Janet Martin