Sunday, September 23, 2012

Stuttered Praise



...and it just kept on shifting; frame after gorgeous frame!




The heavens declare the glory of God;
    the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Day after day they pour forth speech;
    night after night they reveal knowledge

  They have no speech, they use no words;
    no sound is heard from them.

Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,     
their words to the ends of the world. Psalms 19:1-4


You receive our humble, heartfelt stammers
In our fumbles you fill in the blanks
Your Holiness embracing murmured thanks
Rising o’er the din of carnal clamors
You whisper to us from the gleaming Gate
As daylight folds beneath heaven’s command
Your glory tints the molten, mystic strand
Spanning the void twixt ‘welcome home’ and ‘wait’
Hatred and fear’s projections cannot mar
The portal where the feet of angels tread
The aftermath of daylight rests its head
Upon the Hand that lights the evening star
We stand upon earth’s shore; as stuttered prayer
Scales the unfathomed reaches of the air

© Janet Martin

The sunset tonight left me speechless with awe…
Any attempts at word; mere stammering ineptness.
All I could whisper was, “Oh God, thank-you, thank-you, thank-you”

The sunset was a sort of an almost circle north-west-south and partial east!..I had NEVER seen anything quite like it!

Lord Most High


Saturday, September 22, 2012

We Call it...War





They go away
These dear dads
Leaving behind
Little girls with golden curls
And blue-eyed freckled lads
To fight
Other dear dads
Who leave behind
Little girls with golden curls
And blue-eyed freckled lads
We call it war

© Janet Martin

Tonight we (myself, Matt, Victoria and her friend) watched the movie
The Littlest Rebel (Shirley Temple)

‘But how does that help?’ they ask me as they watch soldiers plunder and kill.
‘Mom, how does killing people make things better?
Mom, how can being so mean bring peace?
Mom, why do we have war?
Mom, is war sin?



In the Arms of a Poem



 (one of my favorite quotes)

From all over God’s earth
from sundry trails
we come; to languish in
the vexing delight
held in the arms of
a poem

nothing quite compares, it seems
no other form of art
can evoke or charm
the seeker who dreams
best in the arms of
a poem

its lure, its lull
its push and pull
are like coming home
to a flickering fireside
in the patient arms of
a poem

© Janet Martin

The Best that We Can Hope For...





Since you must depart
I will let you go
I keep within my heart
Love’s very best, you know
For time can never steal
The pictures that I see
A cherished phantom reel
Of precious memory

Then, when the night wind howls
Spurring the embers glow
When winter’s heaving jowls
Spew blasts of ice and snow
There by the fire’s verve
I’ll re-play tenderly
The moments I preserve
In precious memory

We cannot force the hand
From which life’s moments spill
Soon autumn’s sanguine land
Succumbs to winter’s chill
Soon babies learn to crawl
Soon they are twenty-three
The best that we can hope for
Is a precious memory

© Janet Martin


Friday, September 21, 2012

Summer's Requiem





The acoustics are muted; tinged with musk
Arabesque canticle filling the dusk
Mournful madrigal; a hallowed hymn
This is the hour of summer’s requiem

Soundless, it drips from the edge of the earth
Slipping to vaults of intangible girth
Deeper and deeper its purple-blue shroud
Merges with mantle of midnight’s first cloud

No sheet music forms summer’s drifting dirge
As passionate parting and sorrow converge
Over the meadow and frost-stricken swell
Murmurs a monody; Tender Farewell

Quivering quiet; its swan-song is still
Darkness descends over hollow and hill
Echoes of laughter cajole the dark limb
Tuning the ‘after’ of summer’s requiem  

© Janet Martin

She slipped away early...in a gown befitting the occasion; blue, very deep blue.


Majestic Mystery





We must die
Again, again
To self
It’s hard to explain
but that is love
And each time we die
For Love,
For Him
We become
More alive
Immaculate equilibrium
And each time
we empty ourselves
Gasping and thin
He fills us
Fuller than we’ve ever been
That’s that way it is
With love
The exact opposite of
Normal
And logical
Or practical
The more we give
The more we have
The emptier we become
The fuller we are
Dying so we can truly live;
How can it be?
Oh wonderful, majestic
Mystery

© Janet Martin



A Blissful Madness





The hour is mad with possibility
As summer drools against my window-pane
Strumming the leaf-notes of the maple tree
Its music trickling into life’s mundane
Where duty wields its tried and tireless force
And wander-lust, clad in golden day-dream
Bids me to stray from labor’s staid discourse
To wander by the woodland’s ambling stream
The scent of farewell rushes to me, warm
Like waves to shore before a summer storm

I‘m tethered to the hand pushing the plow
Freedom, a fantastic and foreign ploy
As landscapes burgeon with the after-glow
Of hope and harvest; living’s grief and joy
Dare I to shirk the rod of humble toil
To loiter in the crook of summer’s arm
While others work; will I collect their spoil
Yet languish where her parting kiss is warm?
Temptation urges my heart to rebel
A tug-of war twixt duty and farewell

Oh, tender bliss of love; sweet rivers run
Toward the stream where darker waters move
But shadows only happen in the sun
And grief can only happen if we love
I care not where I spend summer’s last hour
My mouth is full of her wine; bittersweet
For love is a mystic, manifold flow’r
And though I feel her presence wane; retreat
I will embrace the parting tear that flows
Without the thorn we cannot have the rose


© Janet Martin




Autumn's Approach





You are here
Somewhere
Standing on a gate
Slowly closing…
There you wait
Beneath the silver sash
Of dewy lawn
Above the splash 
Of ocher dawn
Within the tawny burnished leaf
And summer's sighing, barren sheaf
You press against reality
In whispers spilling from the tree
And leaning, like a memory
Deep against the heart of me
In mornings I cannot reclaim
Like the echo of a name
Of someone that I used to know
In a summer long ago
I hear you tiptoe through the corn
You will be here
By the morrow's morn...

J~