Tug of Ink

PAD Challenge day 10: For today's prompt, write a struggle poem.

To board dawn's gleaming barge

While seasons ebb and flow...

To know when to say ‘yes’

To know when to say ‘no’

To hold to hope and happiness

Amidst love’s letting go

So much to touch and kiss

So much that used to be

So much to balance with the bliss

Of unpenned poetry

Today is always new

Immune it seems, to age

Let’s never grow too old to woo

Its poetry to page

Let’s slow dance, cheek to cheek

What is to be will be

Enough, my love to learn to speak

In tongues of poetry

Let the masses deploy

Long ladders to success

Enough, my love, to feast on joy

Of poem happiness

To press past the façade

Of front-line highs and lows

And to feel the *pleasure of God

In poems to compose

To board dawn’s gleaming barge

While seasons ebb and flow

To stay true to the humble charge

Of life’s ink undertow

© Janet Martin

"When I run, I feel God's pleasure" Eric Liddell

Acts 17:28

‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ 

As some of your own poets have said,

 ‘We are his offspring.’

Candor of the Clock

PAD Challenge day 9. For today's prompt, take the phrase "(blank) of the (blank),"

replace the blanks with a word or phrase,

make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem.

Consummate toll of tick and tock

Determined undertow

Winnowing shorelines made of rock

With season ebb and flow

A minute and momentous merge

Of is, was, and will be

The gilded surface of a surge

Veiling eternity

…while dreamers dream and poets troll

The teeming deeps that mock

The pioneer of heart and soul

Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock

The lilt that tuned the nudge that broke

The shell that held the bow’r

That grew into a mighty oak

Reclaims glory’s fleet flow’r /hour

Giver and taker synchronized

The candor of the clock

Grants and gathers eons comprised

Of teeny tick and tock

…unfurling a tempest of pearls

Some pray, some shake a fist

Tick tock, the clock replies, and twirls

Time’s carousel of mist

© Janet Martin

James 4:14

What is your life? 

You are a mist that appears 

for a little while 

and then vanishes.

Life's Finest Work of Art

PAD Challenge day 8-For today’s Two-for-Tuesday prompt:

Write a form poem, and/or...

Write an anti-form poem.

Form: Shakespearean sonnet

This poem was inspired by the driver of this truck

that pulled over and offered a regular biker to his job, a ride

on this clear, cold, crisp morning!

The biker accepted😊💓

(nothing sets a sweeter tone for the day than acts of kindness)

a smile is a gift anyone can give

a helping hand, life's finest work of art

beauty is found, no matter where we live

if kindness is the first-fruit of the heart 

although no hall of fame or gallery

will showcase, what some may call commonplace

no one can leave a finer legacy

than that of love, humility and grace

no name in lights, no wild applauding cheers

for this is not love's mission or its quest

but to mingle laughter and prayers and tears

and thus become the blessing and the blessed

today, oh, what a perfect place to start

to make another Finest Work of Art

Janet Martin

Colossians 3:17
And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, 

do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, 

giving thanks to God and the Father by him.

    

Adapting to November (both literally and metaphorically;)

 

Nov. .PAD Challenge Day 7. For today's prompt, write an adaptation poem.

I've been drinking in the beauty of leaf song lately!

A weekend of wild winds has winnowed its remnant woo💝

Once more the dirge from leafless limbs through barren belfies peals

Summer and autumn’s harvest hymns of fruit and flower shucked

The gardener admires nature’s ardor as it seals

Its promise with a kiss of seeds ‘neath umber furrows tucked

The blush that once bore roses wears the hasting death of day

Desire turns the other cheek and bears dusk’s dogged woo

For nothing in the world can keep time's westward tug at bay

Darling, to keep believing is the best that we can do

Denial is a futile antidote to steadfast truth

Once more the dirge of leafless hymns ignites a ballad, blue

As cornflowers pressed into sky, or eyes of wizened youth

For all that yet remains to try the sighs of me and you

Once more we brave the welkin trace of fingers without form

And will smiles to our faces while the dirge of autumn plays

A breath stealing ensemble that soon takes the world by storm

As stars and diamonds tremble on the prow of winter days

...that cannot faze the hand of He from whom all mercies flow

That cannot thwart the Deity from whence each season brims

That cannot vex the Giver or His grace whereby we go

Aha, Time's timbers quiver with hope's joy in leafless hymns

© Janet Martin

Compilation of Adaptation

Nov. .PAD Challenge Day 7. For today's prompt, write an adaptation poem.

(This challenge completely slipped my mind this year, until this weekend!)

Happy Monday!

Here's to another page in life's compilation of adaptation,

(a work in constant progress)

We live in a world of whether-change!

Some whethers are like warm and friendly hosts,

others like unwelcome guests!

Forge on, my friend, by the grace of God

He crowns the broken with His beauty!

(like last night's sunset!)

To days gone by none can return

Nor ask for a preview

Of adaptations yet to learn

Where days to years run through

...a flue of love and life run rife

With hellos and goodbyes

No fitting rooms to choose its strife

Or try it on for size

...where it has always been like this

As days to years run through

We learn to adapt to what is

What more, pray, can we do?

...but make the best of what we hold

Lest, in lament we miss

The treasure made of moment-gold

The pleasure in the kiss

The melody twixt Yet and Was

Of holding and release

As Adaptations of Because

Create a masterpiece

While a medley of revisions

With days to years comprise

Adaptation's compilations

Of growing old and wise

The vanity of This and That

Soon slip-slip-slips away

Yet always a fresh welcome mat

Meets us at break of day

..and bids us up and onward through

Adaptation's bequest

While softly days to years undo

The buttons on Soul's vest

With fingers deft and dogged, oh

And whispers that beguile

Beseeching farewells with hello

And teaching tears to smile

Janet Martin

 

Bless the LORD, O my soul!

O LORD my God, You are very great;

You are clothed with splendor and majesty.

2He wraps Himself in light as with a garment;

He stretches out the heavens like a tent,

3laying the beams of His chambers

in the waters above,

making the clouds His chariot,

walking on the wings of the wind...

Psalm 104:1-3

(read the whole spectacular chapter here) 

Today's Centrality

Today is another sunny and still quite mild day

in an especially beautiful fall in southern Ontario!

What we do with Today, no matter the weather 

or whoever or wherever we are,

 has an eternal bearing!

Today matters!

Give us a King- Alistair Begg

  

(The excerpt below is found in the message above)

‘It is interesting that Samuel’s life is marked by long periods of silence, then moments when He comes to the fore. He could not ever come to the fore in such usefulness were it not for the fact that long periods of silence were marked by steady faithfulness. What most of us do in the hum drum nature of our lives, in the private personal way, in the routine activities that are our days, those are the things that make us (and Alistair repeats, ‘those are the things that make us’), and it was certainly so with Samuel.

 

Not what was yesterday or morrow’s yet to be

Today alone requires full responsibility

Today’s centrality twixt past and future set

Is all we ever have wherewith a lifetime to beget

To fret for what is not is gross futility

To work with what today allots is wise humility

To recognize its charge cloaked in the commonplace

To trust God with a thankful heart for His unfailing grace

The place of Here and Now, otherwise called today

In light of what mercies endow, bids us to work and pray

Because today effects accountability

The wise do not neglect/forget this most solemn reality

…that nobody escapes. Prepare to meet Thy God

Let hunger feast upon His Word, to leave us fully awed

Not in morrow’s unknown or Bygone’s beaten path

But in Today, the steppingstone to endless love or wrath

The aftermath of feet stirring Today's brief woo

Inevitably leads to He whose Breath of Life we drew

Where today’s toll unchains links in a sacred cord

Until only the soul remains to receive life’s reward

© Janet Martin

Eccles.12:6

Remember him—before the silver cord is severed, 

and the golden bowl is broken; 

before the pitcher is shattered at the spring,

 and the wheel broken at the well,

Poetic Fulfillment

 Rom.1:20

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—

his eternal power and divine nature—

have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, 

so that people are without excuse.

We shall not want for wonder where the font of nature spills

In fine four-season splendor, to woodlands and fields and hills

The Author of the poetry from which earth’s poets drink

Transcends human periphery confined to page and ink

Without a word He quiets us, without a word He pens

The poetry that silences pride’s pompous clucking hens

We shall not want for wisdom in the prose of Deity

The birds are fed, the lily clothes the field in royalty

The penmanship of earth and sky births reverence unflawed

By mortal boast; our worth the offspring of love’s breath of God

While we dip quills into a wellspring rife with the design

Of branches learning how to cling to the Life-giving Vine

We shall not want for worship while we read the works of He

Who is faithful and perfect though often reviled by we

Who ought to bow the knee and confess with ardent acclaim

The Saviour of Humanity who knows us all by name

He is loving and good, a world of wordless poems spells

His nature clearly understood by what creation tells

© Janet Martin

Surrender's Sacred Sup

He awakens Me morning by morning,

He awakens My ear

To hear as the learned.

Isa.50:4

From welkin wells a love song swells

In torrents unrestrained

As mercy spills and grace refills

The cup that twilight drained

As hope renewed and gratitude

Mingle in sweet accord

To join the hymn where heavens brim

With whispers of our Lord

As we lift eyes beyond the ties

Of duty and decay

To He who writes on welkin heights

The Love Song of Today

From welkin wells a love song swells

In perfect harmony

As mercy spills and grace refills

Cups of mortality

As goodness grants deliverance

Today’s ‘Never Before’

Unveils a feast upon the east

Gaze is a troubadour

Joy is reborn, from morn to morn

God wakens us to heed

His Faithfulness: He promises

To satisfy our need

From welkin wells a love song swells

Surrender’s sacred sup

As mercy spills and grace refills

The cup that faith lifts up

© Janet Martin

Lam.3:22-27

Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed,

Because His compassions fail not.

23They are new every morning;

Great is Your faithfulness.

24“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,

“Therefore I hope in Him!”

25The Lord is good to those who wait for Him,

To the soul who seeks Him.

26It is good that one should hope and wait quietly

For the salvation of the Lord.

27It is good for a man to bear

The yoke in his youth.