The Garden...

PAD Challenge 21: For today’s prompt, pick an object (any object), make it the title of your poem, and then, write your poem.

Soon, soon we can begin making this year's garden-memories!
 a few fond flash-backs

It favors mouth with flavor and the hand with work to do

It lets us greet our neighbors with an extra gourd or two

It teaches perseverance in a classroom flower-strewed

And at the first appearance of fresh shoots, faith is renewed

It turns the common labourer into an artist, oh,

And Tommy learns to name the weeds and vegetables that grow

A patience-testing paradise; this heaven-whispered sod

Where, after we have done our best, the rest is up to God

A turnip-tater temple, walls of sunshine, floors of dirt

A sanctuary where bees, breezes and butterflies flirt

A let’s-go-to-the-garden for a little getaway

A quiet place to work and worship, plant, prune, pluck and pray

A never-quite-like-we-saw-it in dreamland’s oracles

But always awed amazement, where seed-grace grants miracles

A sweat-inducing glory-land where hand and heart re-learn

How fruit of humble labor is love and life’s best return

© Janet Martin

Loveliness of Task

PAD Prompt 20: For today’s prompt, write a task poem.

Of all the loveliness of life, in want and need's duress

Of finding finest treasures in measures of mundane-ness

(Though we may not always have sought or even thought to ask)

We often overlook the common loveliness of Task

The evidence of Providence is in each gifted breath

He grants through Adam’s curse, a chance to taste the bread of worth

Where often in the moil of toil we take and break and eat

Forgetful of Task’s loveliness that favors hands and feet

…and though the glance-value of come and go seems small and plain

If we live to give it our best we will not strive in vain

The saddest state of being, seeing only form and face

And missing how the loveliness of Task spills from God’s grace

© Janet Martin

The best way to -re-appreciate Task is to not feel well enough to perform them for a little while, then we covet the smile of Ordinary and Task! 

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters,

Col. 3:23

Of Earmarked Landmarks

PAD Challenge day 19; For today’s prompt, write a memory poem. 

Yesterday six of us oldest cousins celebrated another 'one of us' joining the ranks of 50 years and counting:) 

We don't all see each other very often so there was lots of catching up and wandering back to years when our lives were intertwined, especially at Grandma and Grandpa's house!

The birthday-girl celebrating fifty years is seen below (in the red sweater). 

She was my childhood best friend and here we are all packed up to walk up the hill to Grandma and Grandpa for 'holidays'...usually a 2-night sleepover. 

Side-note; I live in the house now that we walked to that day:)

We balance scars and stars

And wonder how it is

That Time, with nothing but its hours

Has turned us into this

We gather to compare

Its echoes we hold dear

To gaze on worlds etched on the air

At faces gone, yet here

We trace each tender while

And travel back in years

When grandma was more than a smile

We cherish through fond tears

Now we share middle-age

And stare at childhood’s knell

Cupping the sands of present-stage

Like lands marked for farewell

© Janet Martin

Prayer of Faith

Oh Lord, you know

What we cannot see

And see what

We cannot know

The comfort of

Your love for us

The hope whereby we go

Help us, oh Lord

As we help those

You place within

Our care

For oh, we know

What sight won't show

That You are 

Everywhere

© Janet Martin

So many people to pray for

...to such a capable God !

Hallelujah, He is able

for all we are not.

I love the Lord, because He hears
My voice and my supplications.
² Because He has inclined His ear to me,
Therefore I shall call upon Him as long as I live.

Psalm 116:1-2

Better Than This

PAD Challenge day 18: Somehow we’re already on our third Two-for-Tuesday of the month; 

time is flying.

Here are the two prompts for today:

• Write a life poem. The poem could be about the miracle of life, the complexity of life, the game of Life, or anything else that means life for you. Or…
• Write a death poem. For most organisms, life leads to death. So this should be as full of possibility as the life poem.

Written in memory of Eileen Bowman

From urns of earth, spring’s verdant birth returns

With mist of violets purpling dormant slope

And robins chirping chiralees of hope

And silver brook-song sparkling through new ferns

…in bellies of lost love a fire burns

Morning is polished with a sheen of green

And limb embellished with bud’s ruby gem

And mud a flood of floral diadem

Where long the cold hold of winter had been

Before warmth stirred to sight, faith’s fond Unseen

Before the daffodil leaped from its bed

To bob like sunbeams on hills rain-drop pearled

Before time’s topaz color-wheel unfurled

A world of wonder; pink-gold-purple-red

Before love's heart in full surrender bled

…and love was torn between sorrow and bliss

Her body sleeps in graves beneath the sod

Her soul is in the keeps of Loving God

…but still, we think about what she will miss

Until Someone reminds us;
Heaven is better than this

© Janet Martin

Artiste Incognito

PAD Challenge day 18: Somehow we’re already on our third Two-for-Tuesday of the month; 

time is flying.

Here are the two prompts for today:

• Write a life poem. The poem could be about the miracle of life, the complexity of life, the game of Life, or anything else that means life for you. Or…
• Write a death poem. For most organisms, life leads to death. So this should be as full of possibility as the life poem.

We pretend not to mind

The way you turn a page

Like season-flickers on the wind

Of youth to middle-age

The mementos you make

Then take, ache in love’s sigh

The oceans you leave in your wake

Shimmer in days gone by

Where quivers on the air

Rush to finality

The resonance of here-to-there

A string of memory

How soundless are your feet

Your touch, a subtle knife

That sculpts from hours bittersweet

The echo of a life

© Janet Martin

I attended my friend's mother's funeral yesterday...

Nothing like a funeral to remind one of

life's brevity and death's finality