Natural

We enjoyed our annual February get-away to Toronto,

remarking, as always, the quickness with which this week-end returns each year.

Generally we battle biting, cold gales but this year we joined strolling throngs along the waterfront,

drinking in the gold and blue delight of a February thaw...

It is quite natural, they say

The way we find our way somehow

From far and foreign yesterday

Into a new yet older Now

The turbulence of tick and tock

Walks through us without much ado

Deriving from offspring of Clock

A new, yet older me and you

For as we learn to acclimate

Life’s 'wait-and-see' with 'my-time-flies'

We realize and ruminate

With new, yet ever older eyes

On common ground of Now and Here

We peer into time’s changing face

The balance beam of year-to-year

A new, yet ever older grace

© Janet Martin

We stopped for a mid-afternoon coffee break at Bob's Coffee Bar
(first week-end open!)where our daughter Melissa works.

Thought-Pursuit

 Southern Ontario is enjoying a blip of unseasonal high temps! hooray.

Dark mutes its sigh; the sky adheres

To time’s unstoppered hue, soft blue

As thought pursues its muse of fears

And faith and bit of dreaming too

The air is kissed with grace of God

And we would be remiss to miss

His mercy where the curse of sod

And sweat of thought is more than This

…for This is but the thoroughfare

To where we all will realize

The worth of birth and death; its care

A stairway to more than starred skies

…as thought, for all its sundry ways

Of balancing both good and ill

Cannot do more than trust and gaze

Into the face of days until…

The belfry that tolls where the height

Of sight stops short the might of man

Will fold time’s scroll of day and night

Back to the Whole where we began
...God

© Janet Martin

 Finally, brothers and sisters, 

whatever is true, 

whatever is noble, whatever is right, 

whatever is pure,

 whatever is lovely, 

whatever is admirable—

if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—

think about such things.

Phil.4:8

Must Be...

Must be these moments dipped in frost

That makes me ponder wonders lost

To love’s inevitable cost

Or maybe it’s the fellowship

Of day-to-days that deftly slip

Like petals, inaudible drip

…from touch into that place of years

Where, in fond fashion reappears

An echo-land in salty spheres

So that the pen cannot ascribe

With ink the yen that aches inside

Of Time and its betokened tide

© Janet Martin

"That's a Nice Hibiscus..."

'Oh, help' said the young, beautiful, willowy woman

inside the door of my laundry room, as she came to pick up her little preschooler.

 'I must be getting old! I just said 'that's a nice hibiscus' as if I knew anything about flowers, 

or cared, 

but I am starting to notice flowers, like my mother!'

Of Stumps, Seasons and Souls

Time’s seasoned heart its rampant art extends

A canvas over grave and cradle-blends

Earth takes on form of hill and dale and bow’r

As morn, from bud-like dorm breaks into flow’r

And frees from terminals beyond our sight

Fresh entity of first and final flight

Night fades into new day, then day dissolves

And so the flow of age to age evolves

Ah, see the stump, the lowly stump bereft

Of barefoot boy and warbler’s wordless clef

The wind that wandered through its leafy loft

Finds haunts not yet by moment-meter doffed

Gravestone to nature’s noble balladeer

Its epitaph declares, ‘a tree stood here’

Ere it fell prey to Day’s dominant barge

That strips morn’s maiden voyage of her charge

The rich man’s roulette wheel distracts from death

The beggar begs for life with every breath

New motherhood in wonder of first child

Drinks joy as pure as in Yore, long exiled

The laborer and lover‘s kindred goal

Of home-sweet-home is nectar to the soul

The morning, like a war-cry from the east

Bids some to sharpen tools and some to feast

Tell me, my friend; this common end we brave

…are any here too mighty for its grave?

Have any birthed a master-plan to trick

Five-season’s worth from earth’s four-season wick

Or in the mid of summer’s swelt’ring pall

Can any will the cooling rain to fall?

Or haste the day where we lay boast and trust

To settle on a tray of dust to dust

Awake, awake, dawn’s clarion-call rings clear

To meet nearby Unknown with faith or fear

How slick the quick that pours from morning’s jar

We blink; dusk’s pink sky pinned with Evening Star

Where we are oft surprised by olden wont

And taken quite aback by ancient font

As day fades into night and night to day

While footfalls to Forever wend their way

© Janet Martin

Be Cause

Beneath the weaning sweep of sky

And deep that keeps death’s soulless shell

We learn-laugh-love-yearn-sleep-weep-fly

But only once so live Once well

Between the green of tender youth

And silver sheen of love frost-kissed

We uncover this startling Truth

That one lifetime is but a mist

Before the grave where have and hold

Turns cold in life’s last letting go

We mold from glimmers, gray and gold

Life’s tender, timeless afterglow

Betwixt the blips from dawn to dawn

Though they may seem a minor flit

Our lives are lived, our only one

So we should make the most of it

Beyond the spawn of give and take
And lakes that blush beneath Hope's yawn
We traverse moments to a gate
And what this wake is hinged upon

Behind the veil of Last Exhale
When we exchange Body for Soul
And all things Time-anchored will fail
There, one eternity will roll
...and roll
...and roll

© Janet Martin

Have you pondered eternity recently
...where you will be
...and for how long?!
Big stuff.

Psalm 39:4-5

"LORD, make me to know my end
And what is the extent of my days;
Let me know how transient I am.
"Behold, You have made my days as handbreadths,
And my lifetime as nothing in Your sight;
Surely every man at his best is a mere breath.
Selah.

The Return of the Lord
…For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a loud command,
with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God,
and the dead in Christ will be the first to rise.
After that, we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds 
to meet the Lord in the air.
  And so we will always be with the Lord. 
Therefore encourage one another with these words.…
1 Thess.4:16-18