Tribute to Love

Happy 23rd Birthday, dear, beautiful daughter Melissa (with nephew Brantley)

We change and thus love changes growing ever meeker and deeper.

And just as it was when you were a baby, 

...love keeps astonishing us with awesome wonder.

We love you.

May God bless your journey!

Love keeps no polite distance

Though miles may hinder touch

As force of time’s insistence

Roars heedless through our clutch

The people who we are, dear

Must learn to hold-let-go

But love is never far, dear

It weathers ebb and flow

It is God’s wooing wonder

No heart and soul intact

Love's fulfillment and hunger

Poem cannot exact

How does one pen the yen, dear?

That bleeds as years unfold

And vexes travel-plans, dear

On roads to growing old

...they wind through hill and valley

 To leave behind meek awe

Love keeps no vengeful tally

Of wrong-doing or flaw

 

Its earnest exhortation

To hope and pray and trust

Is God’s kind invitation

To cheer our dust-to-dust

How wise and true this prescript

For as years coalesce

Love teaches us its secret

To humble happiness

Then, as Time’s nonresistance

Rearranges the view

Love keeps no polite distance

But runs us through and through

© Janet Martin   

Anchor

Want’s taunts can haunt the heart and mind

With fantasies touch cannot find

It torment man's terrestrial bark

And even day is night-like, dark

Contentment; healer of want’s ache

Can calm want’s wind and storm-tossed lake

It sets at ease desires that bind

And frees the wrought and captive mind

Want’s base and howling vertigo

Raids thought to find hope for its woe

There is but one redemptive cure

The love of God, faithful and sure

God is gracious to those who heed

His precepts; He fulfills true need

And stills want’s wearying despair

With mercy’s everlasting care

© Janet

O taste and see that the LORD is good;

 How blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him! 

 Psalm 34:8

 Good and upright is the Lord;

therefore he instructs sinners in his ways.

He guides the humble in what is right

and teaches them his way.

All the ways of the Lord are loving and faithful

toward those who keep the demands of his covenant.

For the sake of your name, Lord,

forgive my iniquity, though it is great.

Psalm 25:8-11

Master Peace

The sun also rises, and the sun goes down,
And hastens to the place where it arose.

Eccles.1:5

The crow caws and the wispy gauze

Of violet whispers on yon vale

Turns pale and melts into what was

As Mercy tips time’s awesome grail

The cricket sings and daylight flings

The star-frothed strings of night awry

To spill to streets of common kings

Jewels of dew and gold-hued sky

Love’s ocean sweeps from unplumbed deeps

Man’s near-sightedness bars from view

The Everlasting God that keeps

These spectators of green and blue

Horizons blush; the Artist’s brush

Moves soft across Hope’s weathered wings

Where tumbling through pastel-hued hush

The crow caws and the cricket sings

© Janet Martin

Had to get up extra-early this morning so I enjoyed the glorious unfolding of New Day...
first from my porch then from the bike:)

Lest Thought Yields to Despair...

Lest thought yields to despair

And hope dejected cedes defeat

And hunger leads to feeding where

Nothing its howling want can meet

 

Lest Unknown seems too hard

And what we know is not enough

To mediate twixt head and heart

Mortal’s intrinsic need for love

Lest ‘if’ offers no grace

And brokenness bleeds spirits dry

Without the Wherewithal to face

What is not known to you or I

…we ought to bow in prayer

And break the Bread of Life and eat

Lest thought yields to utter despair

And hope dejected cedes defeat

© Janet Martin

In Lieu of Task To-do ...

Today I'm trying to ignore this to-do list...(except the last thing:)

...for more of this...

Fill blank windowsills with flowers,

Let to-do lists idly sit

Soft, soft, summer doffed of hours

Drains to eons echo-lit

Lie beneath the beaming leaf-bough

Wander lanes with plumed pit-stops

Climb to heaven in a hay-mow

Or a wild-grass strummed hilltop

Drive without a destination

Run, but only if you must

Make Today a celebration

Of what morrow turns to dust

Drink the ink that poets plunder

Do not blink, oh, there it goes

Summer murmurs, spilling wonder

Like pink petals from a rose

Hesitate where barred gates beckon

Trespass; then plead pardon’s grace

Disturb lane-ways lush with bracken

Blue-strife, aster, Queen Ann’s Lace

Soon this berth of blooming bowers

Strips earth’s loom of petal-stars

Leaving in the wake of flowers

Winter’s ache of empty jars

© Janet Martin

But THIS...has a mind of its own!
Just went to choose a juicy snack and there are a whole lot of 'juicy snacks' to choose from!