Showing posts with label present. Show all posts
Showing posts with label present. Show all posts

Thursday, January 26, 2023

The Wonderworld of 'Will' or The Best of 'This'

Oh, the wonders of tomorrow...
Little grand-daughter sighed with ecstasy  as she relived
 a euphoric plethora of summer memories
 while peering through winter's window...toward spring!


Tomorrow will soon be today's challenges and joys
Tomorrow will soon steal today's girls and boys
Tomorrow will change (for better or worse) what Today still is
Tomorrow is a world away; let's make the best of This



'Grandma, why did you tape the door shut?', questioned grand-daughter the other day.
"Because it's not very tight", I replied "and we need to keep the shivery wind outside!
But, one warm, wonderful sunny day Gramma will take the tape off!
We will open the door and set the rocking chair and flowers
 back on the deck and have tea out there
and read books and have campfire suppers!
 Won't that be a happy day?!!"
And grand-daughters eyes sparkled with heaven-like anticipation as she sighed,
'ye-e-eth!! and aunty Mel will be here too, right?'
' Oh, I hope so,' was all gramma could promise๐Ÿ˜…๐Ÿ’–

I've always believed anticipation is one of life's purest pleasures,
but let's not miss what is while we dream, right?!





Someday porch flowerpots will brim with pretty petal-plumes
The wooly-white woodland will ring with reawakened tunes
The meadow will be like a green-spun picnic blanket spread
Beneath a canopy of sun-kissed blue skies overhead

The barren branch will burgeon with hues of replenished shade
The gale will gentle its halloos into a serenade
Raindrop-waltzes will wash the world and rouse earth from its sleep
And windows will not frame counterpanes unfurled, white and deep

New beginnings will flower and blossoms will deck the grass
Dreamland’s barred gate will lower and beckon us to trespass
The quiet interlude between harvest and Planting Must
Will turn into a bustling scene of machine-startled dust

The clock will feast on a buffet of quickened hour-chime
Hearthside evenings borne away until next winter-time
And we will taste spring’s cheeriness that waits within our thought
And we will wear the weariness we had somehow forgot

And we will wonder at the way each season swiftly spills
While hunger scavenges hope’s tray that each new day refills
And we will bow our head in thanks to mortal’s gracious God
Where we will soon join silenced ranks in earth’s grave-stippled sod

The wonderworld of 'will' is filled with what yet waits to be
With tears and laughter not yet spilled into a memory
But, lest we miss the best of This that will fill yesteryears
Let's make the most of what yet is before it disappears 

© Janet Martin


Genesis 3:19
By the sweat of your brow you will eat your bread, 
until you return to the ground--because out of it were you taken. 
For dust you are, and to dust you shall return."

Eccles.12:7
Then the dust will return to the earth as it was,
 And the spirit will return to God who gave it.



Friday, January 14, 2022

Of Glint and Fray


It is impossible 
to return
to undo 
or redo
what we would do
differently 
if given the chance

All we can do
is the best 
we can do
with what we hold
today...


This๐Ÿ’–๐Ÿ’–๐Ÿ’– (do you remember those dream-sweet play-days?)๐Ÿ’˜




Lots of little flash-back moments as the tots of today
dust off the toys of yesterday
and fill them with starry-eyed pleasures once again,
as the little hands that used to play with them are now 
juggling the demands and responsibilities
of growing up

Timeless thrills...


The beginning...
I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; 
and indeed, all is vanity and grasping for the wind.
Eccles.1:14

The conclusion...
Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter:
 Fear God and keep his commandments, 
for this is the duty of all mankind.
Eccles.12:13


Ah, life the way it used to be
Gleams like a summer, sun-kissed sea
Cupped in a sigh, a memory
A vault of yesterdays
Whilst look, the dark above us dims
Like brook-song, morning’s skyline brims
A canticle of hopes-whims-hymns
Shimmers on untouched trays

…with friendship waiting to be made
With Duty’s common promenade
With Poetry’s awed escapade
With high five and low blow
With mercy and sufficient grace
With smile upon a loved one’s face
With hand to hold and dream to chase
With wonderment and woe

…with turning older, tick by tock
Yet, learning not to watch the clock
But rather where and how we walk
While Time is on our side
To try to taste full flavors of
The subtle nuances of love
And to never get quite enough
Of moments not yet tried

While dust to dust and ash to ash
Waits to reduce its starry splash
And slow the feet that dance and dash
Through childhood’s greenest green
Until they too gaze at a sea
Cupped in a sigh, a memory
Of life the way it used to be
Before the years between

Ah, life the way it used to be
Is juxtaposed with you and me
And present opportunity
To tint the glint and fray
That tunes the tide that ebbs and flows
With echo-molded mementos
That wash in pictures we compose
With what we hold today 

© Janet Martin


Sunday, April 5, 2020

Thus, Today


Song for Today...



Tomorrow’s sorrows none can bear on shoulders of today
It robs us of the strength to bear what soon will pass away
The mind directs our feet and hands to do the best we can
‘To fear God and keep His commands is the duty of man’
Thus today holds more than enough to keep us occupied
Before the shadow of its glove dissolves on eventide

Yesterday is too far away to ever touch again
All that once was, was once today’s blip of pleasure and pain
Thus who dares squander wonder’s This with worry or regret
 Longing for what no longer is or roads not taken yet
Thus today grants us just enough to fit us for the task
Before its gift of work-play-love-pray falls prey to the past

Today is all we ever have to climb time’s sacred flight
Suspended between worlds engraved and starry, starry night
A step-by-step endurance race while tick by tock unwinds
A breath-by-breath intricate lace of grace moment-designed
Thus today is the perfect size to fit into a prayer
Before twilight gathers good-byes to fade into thin air

© Janet Martin

 Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: 
Fear God, and keep his commandments:
 for this is the whole duty of man.
Eccles.12:13

Heaven; death, pain, fear and sickness free!
Has this hope not taken on a sweeter realization as we miss
face-to-face fellowship with each other ?!

Monday, November 25, 2019

Crucial In-betweens


The above bedroom, painted purple years ago during a school March-break
and sitting empty for the better part of the past five years (save clutter and cribs)
it is about to get a face-lift after we decide on a colour (or non-colour?)!


 Days that seemed so lasting then are nothing now, 
but echo-sparkles...

Days glint, their sparkles felled
Like ripples rushed to sea
Where whelming wonders once we held
Meld into memory

What seems so commonplace
In work-week’s tug and kiss
Forges from ordinary days
The very best there is

Where the wee while we have
To ride out highs and lows
Cannot stave off wave over wave
Of love’s high fives and blows

The brunt of here and now
By brute force of tick-tock
With the disguise of where-when-how
Bestows its aftershock

…of echo-addled scenes
That thought alone can see
Captured in crucial in-betweens
Of what was and will be

© Janet Martin

Tuesday, June 11, 2019

What We Did...




We never did do all we thought we would
When we were young
But still, the door of opportunity
Is mercy-flung
It makes, through our mistakes a way to
Move forward, not back
And helps us, if we try, to make the most
Of what we lack
For wealth is not the equity of assets we may boast
But heart of love and gratitude for that which matters most

We never did find pie up in the sky
Or pots of gold
But we found something better on our way
To growing old
For in those places God ordained
To answer prayers with wait
We found a wealth of wonder
To humbly appreciate
And as we count our blessings instead of wishes and fears
In the light of true thankfulness Want's darkness disappears

We never did land on Fantasy Island’s
Destiny
But learned to trade in dreams for
Momentous Reality
The Brigadoon that lured us when
Love was still starry-eyed
Has baptized faithful service
With a sweeter, simpler pride
Where what we hold, we’ve come to see, is always on the verge
Of slipping through our fingers to the shores where echoes surge

We never did prove much more than our
Predecessors did
The trails we blazed merge like a maze
Strewed beneath heaven’s lid
Where feet, still fleet with dreamer’s dust will kick
Up sacred stars
Then turn to learn that wanderlust has drained
Youth’s sparkling jars
And molded rebel-clay into kinder thank-yous somehow
Keening a purer appetite for life’s Momentous Now

We did find out freedom of choice carries
An awesome weight
And what we speak most loudly needs no words
To validate
We’ve found the common ground of realizing
How it feels
To sense the Past, like puppies always nipping
At our heels
And though, so far from perfect or how we thought
It might be
We find the present is a gift to cherish
Thankfully

© Janet Martin

Tuesday, October 17, 2017

Of Present Push and Pull







It grants us dances, thwarts our steps
It lets us leap and fall
A labyrinth of dreams and debts
And wonders big and small

Laughter and longing intermix
What seems a gathered sum
Is but a bitty bubble fixed
To what it will become

It bursts the bastioned bud with bloom
Bloom spills its beaming laud 
Threading the shuttle of a loom
 Mastered by nature's God

Earth’s births are hinged to death, but wait
Farewell hails veiled advent
It forges from felled gold a gate
To seasons not yet spent

It never stays the same for long
This present push and pull
Composes stanzas in a song
We never hear in full

© Janet Martin