When We Pray...

When we approach our gracious Lord

Though boldly, may He see

A heart of penitence out-poured

In meek humility

When we draw near to Holy God

Love’s divine genesis

May our pleas be wholly awed

Because of Who He IS

When we, with fervent hungering

Pour out our heart and soul

May we resign our will to Him

And trust His kind control

When we implore on bended knee

To He, all-glory crowned

May we never forget that we

Are bowed on holy ground

© Janet Martin

A Mother's Heart

 Precious weekend with the whole family passed SO fast!

All that remains is echoes...

There are gaps

When words don’t fit as well as she had planned

Perhaps if you live long enough, my love,

You’ll understand

Then there are words

You’ve heard so often maybe you don’t know

How ‘I love you’ wrings from its sentiment

Her joy and woe

There are tears

The years flow through us quicker now it seems

And she has learned to siphon splendor

From surrendered dreams

There are smiles

The miles we have to go would be too long

Without the beauty of love’s truly

Sentimental song

Then there are times

Sometimes when intention misses the mark

While gaps and words and tears and smiles blurt out

A mother’s heart

© Janet Martin

Not Because We're Crazy, Just Because We're... Getting Older;-)

Before the door

To season spent

Swings open to the new

And pathways hewed

Through spewed unknown

Fills retrospective view

Before the repertoire

Of More pours

Moments into hours

Have you delayed

Duty to dally

And converse with flowers?

…and have you,

For the love of blue,

Lain beneath welkin sweep

Before the door

To season spent

Yields to lorn winds that weep

Across the swell

Where hill and dell

Once green, lies sere and still

Have you taken

The long way home

To roam its poem-sill?

Nothing lasts long;

The song that stirs

The blur of leafy limb

Soon lies beneath

The bough, a wreath

On tombs of bloom-strummed hymn

Time’s easy-going manner,

Like a banner

On the breeze

Wafts, oft without

Much notice over

Almost memories

Before the door

To o’er and done

Turns into season spent

Before we pause

To wonder how

And where it came and went

Have you, have I

Have we without excuses

Crooned our thanks

While chatting with

Tired roses strewn

On high noon’s river-banks

© Janet Martin

Glad! ...and Happy Thanksgiving, Canada

I’m glad we live where children laugh up to the big blue sky

Where love is served in supper soup and autumn pumpkin pie

I’m thankful to forefathers who through faith in God endured

With blood-sweat-tears for future years this land their grit secured

I’m glad for moms and dads who did not quit when love was hard

For freedom to stroll down the street or sit in the back yard

For luxury of ‘what’s for lunch?’, ‘what shall we do today?’

For ramble-amble gambols beneath sky-heath blue and gray

I’m glad for harvest, home, for poems, picnics, company

A table spread for dinner or a quiet cup of tea

For noise of carefree boys, for girly-girls, for work well done

For family to scold and hold and miss when they are gone

I’m glad we live where worship to God is not outlawed (yet)

(Though He is greater than the hate that ignorance begets

And he is faithful to the humble, never border bound

Where prayer can move a mountain to the sea without a sound)

I’m glad for gardens, summer sealed in jars for winter’s lunch

For puddles, cuddles, kite-string muddles where autumn leaves crunch

For teddy bears and messy high-chairs holding morrow’s man

For days gone by to look back on and future full of plan

I’m glad, so glad for you, my love, and glad, so glad for me

Even though we have never met we are all family

I’m glad for Words to gird our hope in a God who is real

His mercy, new each morning buoys the believer’s zeal 

Wherever we may be from where we were, I’m glad for this

Today is always clean, without intention run amiss

I’m glad for zinnias, zephyrs, zeros on a credit-line

Tables for two, when rain forecast is wrong and its sunshine

Oh my, when we begin to count the ‘glads’ of day to day

It behooves us, before all else to bow our heads and pray

Our gratitude to He who helps, loves, keeps our whole life through

I’m glad that we can know where we go He goes too, aren’t you?

© Janet Martin

To Keepers of Home Sweet Home..

"What, no Thanksgiving Bake-Buffet??? but it's tradition"

said Victoria, after my suggestion of 'maybe not this year'

so I baked,

(if only to preserve a little sameness in life's constant change)

She tends the Flame, preserves a touch of sameness where Time’s tide

Is bent on change and the estrangements of its sultan stride

She keeps the kettle on, stirs supper-soup and hums a hymn

Turns on the lights of home sweet home when gloaming shadows dim

She guards the hearth where innocence of childhood days are doffed

Its laughter, sweet upon the lips spirals to echoes soft

As Time goes by she comes to learn how sacred-swift the role

Of discipline and cultivation of body-clothed soul

How small may seem the menial task that fills her résumé

And oft, when asked ‘what do you do?’ she knows not what to say

Strange how the mop-sweep-fold and keep of homespun commonness

Cannot convince the by-stander 'tis earthly heaven-ness

The plant and gather season is a smooth and subtle sweep

Baskets hold fruit and flowers; most of harvest rests heart-deep

She weeps for the full joy of it, oft caped in noise and mess

And treasures the kind measure of love’s humble happiness

She knows that she cannot afford to overlook her charge

Soon, far too soon young heads are turned by the wide world at large

And thus she bows her head, pleads for a Higher Hand to guide

As she tries to preserve a touch of sameness in time’s tide

© Janet Martin

This morning I am so thankful for what a good night's sleep bestows...
invigoration where weariness the night before felt eternal!