Hello, Fellow-traveler, I'd Like to Inquire...

Hello, fellow-traveler, I’d like to inquire

What gives you the courage to climb ever higher?

What grants you the vim to resume undone task

Where yester-night you depleted fervor’s flask?

What gives you the get-up-and-go once again?

What drives you to doing what oft seems in vain?

Tell me, what rekindles the flame in your breast

Where yester-spark dwindled, snuffed by weariness?

And in spite of knowing that we cannot know

How, when or where life’s harsher tempests will blow

Tell me, what in spite of this draws you to rise

Forging ever forward toward life’s demise?

Hello, fellow-traveler, tell me if you can

What persuades you to the pursuit of a plan?

What bids you anew to avenues of sod?

Tell me, could it be the loving grace of God?

© Janet Martin

But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, 

slow to anger, 

abounding in love and faithfulness.

Ps.86:15 

Essence of Existence

Break of new day, heavy with gray of rain

Dapples Duty's terrain as dark subsides

And hills spill over with time’s youngest tides

They wash across the world toward the drain

…that gapes, even as newness drapes the old

And shapes from yester-fancying Today

Already its mad rush of gray on gray

Eddies and swirls into the steady hold

…of moments lent and spent, a synchronous

Exchange that none can fully feel or grasp

This Essence of Existence girds each gasp

Where life’s verge merges with death’s impetus

…and splurge of gray surges to biding blue

We, hope-and-dreaming pioneers embark

On its current of daylight growing dark

Like sailors ever caught twixt old and new

© Janet Martin

Come, Climb, Dance or Fly a Poem

Come with me, dare to taste the yen of poetry, for oh

The heart can traverse fathoms where a foot will never go

Come, let its letters fuel what fetters of stringent law

Can never render; wonder, the accomplishment of awe

The foot for all its purpose practices pure principle

Of backward, forward, upward, onward walk-run-dance-stumble

The heart, oh but the heart can fly on syllables where ink

Turns letters into pictures and gray day to raving pink

Come with me then and step across cold thresholds steeped in fact

Climb past these elemental vestibules to worlds intact

Where lyric, lilt and rhyme render splendor with tender verse

And do not think too hard, for bards are exempt from Law’s curse

Kick off your wooden shoes, slip into gossamer and silk

Then climb the vine that leads to lands that flow with honeyed milk

And do not be afraid to dance, or at the least to try

For in the arms of poetry to fall is but to fly

© Janet Martin

In Spite of What We Wish We Had...

In spite of what we lack or wish

With all our heart and soul we had

We do not have the right to dish

Words to make fellow-travelers sad

 How quick the spit of spite set free

Can wound the spirit like a dart

Lodged deeply where eye cannot see

The thoughtlessness on our part

The heart for all its hidden pleas

That God alone bears witness to

Is ever better when our knees

And not our tongues, suffer its rue

© Janet Martin

 
…Look at the ships also, though they are so great and are driven by strong winds, are still directed by a very small rudder wherever the inclination of the pilot desires. So also the tongue is a small part of the body, and yet it boasts of great things. See how great a forest is set aflame by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity; the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body, and sets on fire the course of our life, and is set on fire by hell.…

James 3:4-6

The Give and Take of Life

The only thing that keeps us from breaking under life's constant giving and taking, is grace.

Sometimes it feels like we take more

Than our fair share of grin-and-bear

My points of view too oft ignore

Your points of view way over there

Life’s second miles would wear us thin

And the lament of longing too

If love were not the law within

That bends our will to see it through

The heart before the hand must learn

The art of humble give and take,

Then we won’t ponder its return

But simply do it for love’s sake

We are all beggars in the mind

The give and take of life, a tool

That teaches us how to be kind

Or else a blind and broken fool

The Golden Rule of Life is thus;

To do to others as we would

That others would do unto us

This law of give and take is good

© Janet Martin