Thursday, May 3, 2012

Channels




Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain,
    and a path for the thunderstorm,
 to water a land where no one lives,
    an uninhabited desert,
 to satisfy a desolate wasteland
    and make it sprout with grass?
 Does the rain have a father?
    Who fathers the drops of dew?
Job 38: 25-28

Beneath the tumbled awning
Of a thunder-laden tress
A sudden jolt of dawning
Amplifies our nothingness

How oft have we, with troubled gaze
Traversed unfathomed deeps
Longing to understand the ways
Of One who never sleeps

But as we search the astral plains
From porticos of dust
He cuts a channel for the rains
…all we can do is trust

…in Him, who has a higher thought
Than man can realize
Beneath His touch nature is taught
And man, if he is wise

Beneath the tumbled awning
Of a thunder-laden tress
He whispers to our longing
And He fills our nothingness

© Janet Martin


A Pantoum...Spring Fever



 Poetic Bloomings asks us to try a Pantoum

The PANTOUM consists of a series of quatrains rhyming ABAB, in which the second and fourth lines of a quatrain recur as the first and third line in the succeeding quatrain; each quatrain introduces a new second rhyme as BCBC, CDCD… In the last quatrain, the two unused lines from the opening quatrain are used to fill in the last stanza, with the first line of the poem becomes the last line of the poem (ZAZA). Walt’s example illustrates this traditional form of PANTOUM.

(This sounds just challenging enough to be alluring)

I’ve come down with a sudden fever
Aroused by breezes tumbling through the screen
And I’ve become an old, renewed believer
In words like violet, indigo and green

Aroused by breezes tumbling through the screen
Passion stirs a yearning wanderlust
As words like violet, indigo and green
Draw me to pastures rich with rain-drenched dust

Passion stirs a yearning wanderlust
A longing to return, I know not whence
So I choose pastures, rich with rain-drenched dust
Wiggle like a child, beneath its fence

A longing to return, I know not whence
But Father Time does not restore the past
As now a woman squirms beneath the fence
Content to revel in its shadow cast

Father  Time does not restore the past
So, I’ve become an old, renewed believer
Content to revel in its shadow cast
Oh, I’ve come down with a sudden fever…

© Janet Martin

Hope's Wonder




Do not despair
As petals fall
Returning to the earth
For this is not
Hope’s curtain-call
But its humble re-birth

As sullen soil
Reclaims its fruit
And dust returns to dust
The seed of hope
Remains secure
Beneath this transient crust

For in the bloom
Abides the Source
Although we cannot see
He imbues
In Time’s discourse
Hope’s wonders yet to be

© Janet Martin

 Psalms 103:15 As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.

To Walt and Marie...



Their kind words fall
Soft, whispered seeds
Into a fallow plot
They sprout
Creating poetry
From gathering of thought

Kind words are seeds
They strip the weeds
That fain would choke the flower
They nurture where
Bleak, dark despair
Would seek to over-power

Translucent seeds
Kind words inspire
A universal garden
Where poetry
Blooms rampantly
Beneath love’s tender pardon

© Janet Martin

Congratulations to one year in bloom!

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

A Young Man's Awakening...



One day it is basketball
The next day its guns
Or hockey or baseball
In the name of ‘fun’
I worried as I hugged him
And bid him goodnight
That somehow we were missing
Getting priorities right
But as I turned out the light
He asked, ‘Mom, can you pray?
and mom, do you know what I thought of today?
I thought of how pointless
Everything is
No matter what we get
Because everything changes
And nothing stays
It all disappears…’
I feel a lump in my throat
And the sparkle of tears
as he continued…
‘Yeah, I just suddenly thought
of how useless life is
if we don’t have God…’
 

Mom. Otherwise known as Janet~

Matthew turns 14 today.


Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Willing...




I would be willing to drink for a while
The warm mellow, yellow
Of May’s genteel smile
And I would be willing to let the hour pass
Lounging on pillows
Of earth-scented grass
Beneath budding tresses of willow-tree sigh
The back-drop an azure
And cloud-coddled sky
Where nothing would wander from this perfect spot
But the pleasures I ponder
In the garden of thought

© Janet Martin

Temple or God?

  

Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies. 1 Cor. 4: 19-20

I flip through a myriad
Of glossy facade
And I wonder if our bodies
Are a temple
Or god
No mention made
Of the heaven-breathed dust
As air-brushed perfection
Arouses our lust
Look ten years younger!
Feel like twenty-four
Eat all you want
And lose inches galore
Laser to rob us
From the laugh-lines of life
There is Botox to numb
Or transformation of knife
Because looking your age
Is becoming a crime
None should surrender
To the soft touch of time
Cosmetics to paint
What cannot be ‘helped’
A vitamin drink
Is a miracle, gulped
Bleach, dye, remove
We are commodities
In the world’s most thriving
Of industries
As photo-shop images
Seduce the mind
In a quest that is hopeless
For we cannot find
Life’s rich contentment
In this transient facade
If our body becomes
Not the temple, but
A god…

© Janet Martin
Yes, I totally believe in taking care of our bodies…
because they are ‘a temple…’
God, let me not be so consumed by it that it becomes a god…

Thank-you Glynis...

Without the encouragement and editing
of a friend, kind and dear
The article I attempted
would not be here...

Janet Martin