Ever-present Essence of Something More

Earth slumbers beneath a blanket of stars

Time’s numbered days dwindle; dawn drains night’s bars

Darkness recedes, heaven's ebb of high tide

Unveiling streets, cities, and countryside

Oh, winter-white wonder, oh, green garb of spring

Oh, blue and gold summer, oh fall Color King

What gossamer law through thy fleet bearing weaves

Bud full of blossom to mud full of leaves

Time is no mere decoration of trees

More than a circuit of sun over seas

Or rose-blush rush toward age-sallow skin

Time runs its bow over earth’s violin

…composing a lifetime, chords of a clock

Toll, a grand metronome, tick-tock, tick-tock

Tugs ever closer that last curtain-fall

Time is a kiss on the cheek of death’s pall

Buckets and mops, mortgages, dinner, crops

Time is much more these mundane non-stops

While light swindles stars and spring kindles sod

Time dwindles in numbered days back to God

© Janet Martin

A person's days are determined; 

you have decreed the number of his months and have set limits he cannot exceed.

Job 14:5

Well, I'm off to buckets and mops and dinner-prep non-stops...for now:)

Have a Happy Saturday!

Our Saturday is covered in a fresh sweep of snow. 

Last night its big flakes filled the dark as if heaven spilled a jar of cotton-balls! 

Stunning.

Juxtapositions

Quiet sleeps the valley

Cloud-storm skims yon hills
 Dark defines the shadow

Bright, light of day spills

Laughter sparkles upward

Down the mute tear falls

Overhead blue heavens

Beneath, brown grave-walls

Toil, gift born from God’s curse

Play, an aimless loll

Around us, life witnessed

Within, unseen Soul

Life so full of breathing

Death, last breath unfurled 

Hope, a brimming chalice

Fear, a stricken world

Love, like a lark singing

Loneliness, a cloud

Yesterday, a memory

Tomorrow, a shroud

© Janet Martin

It takes one to realize the other...

Of Desire and Discernment

 1 Cor.8:1-3 KJV

So much to do

Love fills life with zest

But don’t let its Good

Crowd out its Best

So much to see

Of God’s handiwork

But don’t let wonder

Take the place of His Word

So much to read

Wherever we look

But none like the pages

In God’s Holy Book

So much to learn

So much to be

Before we meet God

And eternity

So much to do

But futile unless

We discern from good

That we need The Best

© Janet Martin

Inspired by This

More Than Anything...

It waits at each turn

A four-letter surprise

In threads of heaven-

Lent paradise

Sometimes it tastes

Like the coffee you brought

After picking up two

‘On second thought’

I’ve seen it

Heaped on a laundry-room floor

A cotton-tossed sea

Where life-echoes roar

In school-work on tables

In dream-dust that wafts

Restless with green hope

Far away, hunger-soft

Four-letter heart-storm

As you rush in

To declare that you found

A whisker on your chin

And you grab Dad’s razor

So eager to shave

I’ve held its whole world

In a ‘see-you, mom’ wave

…and suffered the subtle

Undoing of heart

As its strings bind closer

What life tugs apart

It spills in bills and in
Stripped cookie jars
It thrills the common
In eyes kissed with stars

It shatters life-silences
Scatters 'stuff' about
Out-poured, it refills
What we cannot live without

Thank-you God, more than anything

This is enough

To be part of a beautiful

Picture called Love

© Janet Martin

Beneath a Common Sky...

We fight. The flight of night to day to night

Falls over cobblestone where our feet

Fly over thoroughfares of dying light

Dusk is a pink pool cooling sunburned street

Raw readiness of what must be competes

With vesture vexing touch like dust of stars

As infrastructure of eons repeats

The emptying of light from heaven-jars

From Betrayed to Betrayer, azure splay

Falls until heaven’s deep is overcome

And darksome chalice brims with light of day

It spills through velvet black, hangs up the sun

Then, what was birthed in Eden carries on

We toil. The plight of Adam’s curse remains

Beneath a common sky we hail dusk, dawn

That spawns what God’s Tremendous Love sustains

© Janet Martin

"Well, the way I see it", said a boy in my Sun. School class as we discussed the fall and Punishment, "women sure got off a lot easier than men. Women just have to suffer once in a while but men have to suffer every day!"

 ;-)

Referring to this passage in Gen.3:16-17

The Punishment of Mankind 

To the woman He said, "I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, In pain you will bring forth children; Yet your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you." Then to Adam He said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat from it'; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life.