Time's Citadel

Yellow school bus flashes black wink, etched in rising sun

How quick familiar passes, blink. Where sage is silver-spun…

Those years of ‘now I lay me down to sleep’ have shed their green

Now I pray, Lord, guide and bless and ever keep their conscience keen

Too soon pale stars search out the cove where daylight spilled its mirth

A little bit of life, my love, before Death’s second birth

Time’s citadel cannot contain its sweet four-season surge

Yet fills its hills again, again with litany and dirge

Faith is the substance of our hope and Unseen’s evidence

Toward its Higher Clime we grope for living’s recompense

© Janet Martin

Of Poets and Gates...

The innocence of your staid stance

Vexes poets; for a glance

Is all it takes to stir the brakes

Cleaving to thought’s unbounded lakes

Darling, silk silence can beguile

With nothing more than hint of smile

And I’m a beggar plagued by yen

Of what is hidden in a pen

...and did you know your tinctured flow

Rends where only a word can go?

Yet there you lie and here am I

Taunted by your impassive ply

Tidal-vein of hurricane

Paradigm of parting’s pain

Doggerel of dying dream

Sealed in soulful ink-requiem

Darling, do you sense the storm

Cradled in your guile-less form?

Pen; oh, plain, persuasive gate

Where ten-thousand poems wait

© Janet Martin

What Is This Span of Seasons Strewn?

What is this span of seasons strewn

On sweep of sand or through rock hewn?

Of lily-laughter lacing dust

Or shadow tracing wander-lust

Daybreak climbs to high noon, then soon

Dusk pins the dark with crescent moon

What spins this sacred swoon of air

Where we press on…to what? To where?

Is this day-night-to-day a hoax

Of hours strung on sun-rise spokes

Before the west burns quietly

With one more page of history?

…and is the awe of nature’s best

Mere wonder-frames of moment-jest

or Miracles without a God?

Is Time but silliness of sod,

And all its battles that we brave

But for the glory of the grave?

Ah, what is this which rends the flesh

And mends the heart with loneliness?

If we are beasts without a soul

Then what is joy or living’s goal?

And is our guerdon Death, cold-grinned

As ashes drift upon the wind

…and then, is Calvary a tale

Of nothing but fireside regale?

And would Perfection die for naught?

Ah, what is life? Skin, blood and thought?

No, no! Touch earnestly Time’s sod

Life is the road that leads to God

© Janet Martin

His Name is Jesus

(I’ve used this title before but this Greatest Name of All Names bears repeating for ‘in him was Life and that life was the light of men’.

In Him was life

The One who died

Descended to be

Crucified

He who said,

‘I am the bread,

The living water,

They despised

And instead

Rejected, led

Like lamb to slaughter

Jesus Christ

Word became flesh

His flesh loathed, torn

They smote, spat, crowned

Jesus with thorns

Our righteousness

This One, Jesus

With ‘it is finished’

Set man free

Obedience

Even to death

Conquered Death,

How can it be?

In Him was Life

The Light of men

A rockbound tomb

Could not contain

He broke death’s chains

Victorious

What is His name?

His name is Jesus

© Janet Martin

She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins." Matt. 1:21

Student Card

With new-born breath we are enrolled

Into the School of Life

Where no one is too young or old

To taste Time’s joy or strife

Life spills its lessons in the moil

Of toil’s everyday vaunt

Its students we, of sorrow’s spoil

Of have and hold and want

The hunger of life’s loss and love

Begins on birth’s first page

First touch, first step, first word, we move

From age to age to age

…as from one class we graduate

Only to humbly find

New lessons laid on learning's plate

To test heart, hand and mind

The Teacher is a tree, a child,

A thousand voices veiled

Within the winsome and the wild

Of battles won and failed

The Master is a loving God

Not harsh or cruel or grim

He scrawls our lessons on earth’s sod

To prove our need of Him

The wise take heed and ever learn

The wonder of it all

While foolish loathe, spurn and return

 A wasted, crumpled ball

Once more Time opens up its door

This day the Lord has made

Invites us to learn and explore

Toward our passing grade

© Janet Martin

I held a new-born recently marveling at her response to touch, her need as she whimpered in hunger...

Her Grandma shares a burden of sorrows for a daughter being tested beyond understanding, yet filled with joy at the wonder of new life; ah, the spectrum of life-lessons, intense, hard, beautiful...

Journey of A Mother's Heart as Her Daughter Turns Thirteen

 While I was picking up a few groceries on Sat. Victoria surprised me with a fresh Spring center-piece on the dining-room table.

(this week's Saturday muffins; carrot-raisin-nut)

A mother’s heart can tiptoe soft

The pencil-line shadow of Thirteen

Stretched all the way to the evergreen

As child, but not for long, waits for the bus

A mother’s heart can clench sweet agony

As floral cup touches lip

Where Thirteen discovers the friendship

Found in a cup of mango-tea

A mother’s heart can follow like a prayer

That arm-and-leg dreamer and dancer

As Time, ever a smooth romancer

Courts Thirteen without a care

A mother’s heart can break and heal

In one quavering inhale, exhale

Where Thirteen, tumult of smile-tear regale

Teeters twixt woman and girl

A mother’s heart can bend and bear

Love’s fabric, as Thirteen grins

Oblivious to worlds beneath a mother’s skin

And that long, slow, seamless tear

© Janet Martin

 Something about Thirteen that gets me every time! Victoria turned 13 a few weeks ago and suddenly she just seems older.

The Newness of Nothing New

There is nothing new of sun and rain

But on the other hand, how can that be?

This pastel backdrop rising from Time’s sea

Unveils before our gaze newness again

The wonder of new morning fills a scope

Where what is seen will soon be something more

Yet we must wait while newness draws the door

Ajar to filament of mortal hope

Summer and winter’s repetitious clime

Is nothing new, they say, yet from its sheen

A virgin hour unravels from a skein

Where none before have touched this thread of time

The moorland mead is bathed in burnished bronze

And we have never seen it quite like this

How just a bit of sun and morning mist

Transform night’s doleful dark to golden ponds

Nothing is new, said the old Prophet of yore

Perhaps ‘tis true in the grand scheme of things

But oh, the wonder that new morning brings

Stirs in the human heart new hope once more

© Janet Martin

 What has been will be again,
    what has been done will be done again;
    there is nothing new under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1:9

Even in our 'nothing new's', there is so much 'new'!

 

'Oh mom', they laugh as I stare transfixed. 'It's just another sunrise!'

'No', I reply, 'It's never 'just another sunrise' because we have never seen this one before and we never will again so look, look long before it is gone...forever!'

Thank-you Card

Light cleaves to air where just a while ago

Midnight clung to each ridge in boundless black

Dawn breathes its glory o’er time’s testing track

Grace scrawls deliverance in burnished gold

Creature complaint though common unto man

Falls mute beneath this ether evidence

Of God extending patient providence

Above this marred and sullied sorrow-span

…for morning is each longest night’s reward

Mercy does not withhold the hope of dawn

God holds love’s beacon as we journey on

And all that we can say is thank-you, Lord

© Janet Martin

 Worship the LORD in the splendor of his holiness; tremble before him, all the earth. Ps.96:9