Poem of the Week ~ Grace-Moments

Kids, this poem by Janet Martin, of Another Porch, just says it all about families, how fast our children grow up, how full, with laughter and tears, our hearts are, as we look back on all the fleeting years. Janet has a way of making us aware  of what she calls "the beautiful ordinaries", reminding us to cherish them as they come. She posted this wonderful collage to accompany the poem, and I simply must include it. Check it out on Janet's site, where you can see it more clearly. It is precious.

GRACE-MOMENTS

Don’t grieve that it’s gone, wonder that it was.
Laugh that you lived and dance that you dared.
Inhale that it happened — and it was grace.  
Ann Voskamp a Holy Experience

...and so, that is what we do
slipping new seasons over our shoulders
like the earth wears spring, then summer,
fall then winter, 
snow after the dew...
moments melded by God's grace
into laugh lines on our faces
and memories that the heart embraces
as thought re-traces 
where feet cannot go

...for the heart is a harbor from which dreams set sail
or come home to anchor in time's shifting swell 

and all we can do is live in the moment
because
soon it will simply be
what once was...

J~
My kids birthdays make me a little sentimental:)

                  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~                 

As it turns out, I scheduled this a few weeks back, not even making the connection that this poem would follow Mother's Day - but it is actually the perfect follow-up to yesterday's Pantry. Thank you, Janet, for such a heartwarming poem, and for the  look back at all those busy, happy years. Yours is this week's Poem of the Week!

Blog of the Week - Another Porch

Kids, this week we are happy to feature Janet Martin, of Another Porch, as our Blog of the Week. Janet, a Canadian living in Southern Ontario, writes wonderful poetry, and is very accomplished at writing form poetry, a talent I admire greatly. You will also find magnificent photos on her blog, showing the beauty of her area. She tells us she is a mother and wife, "one husband and four kids rich." Janet describes herself as a "lover of moments in the music of life", and her poetry often features her appreciation of nature's beauty and her gratitude for all of God's Creation. 

Here is one of Janet's poems  that I enjoyed in the last few weeks:

Beautiful Ordinaries

Embrace them,

All those beautiful ordinaries

Shaping our toil and strife

Embrace them

For beautiful ordinaries

Shape a life

Embrace them

The endless clean-up

and clutter

The chatter, the scatter

Of shoes, back-packs,

The scolding of Mother

Embrace them

The beautiful ordinaries

To which we become blind

Because in the still of retrospect

The ordinaries bind

The scattered fragments

Of duty’s strife

To color the pages

Of a beautiful life

© Janet Martin

and another:

Of Impressions.......a sonnet

There is no sturdy bulwark for the heart

To guard it from the boldness of your sigh

There is no sentinel to stand on guard

Or seal the echo dripping from the sky

Caught in the throat of midnight’s moody breeze

The elements of love and longing seep

For none can thwart the flow of memories

They rise and fall like billows of the deep

As yesterday puts on the muted robe

Of centuries that form the silent dust

The milkweed flings its silk across the globe

Heedless of where its silver seed is thrust

But we, the author of our private woes

Can never its full direness disclose

***

Wrapped in the velvet pleasure of your thought

Is all the goodness of this world I ask

It compensates for all the ‘what-is-not’

The mind is surely a mysterious flask

I lift my glass up to the weeping air

The wine of retrospect is bitter-sweet

The shadow-lull of summer’s empty chair

Are phantom waves receding from my feet

I trace the words you brushed against my cheek

Time cannot steal the laughter from love’s grin

Or snuff the whisper of the thoughts we speak

We seal their touch in vaults beneath our skin

For we, the keepers of love’s kind caress

Must cherish it with sacred tenderness

***

Life paints upon the canvas of our souls

Its intimate and panoramic art

Where none can hear the murmur that consoles

Or runs translucent fingers through the heart

And no one else can see the artist’s brush

The feathering of light against the dark

Or how the colors whirl and swirl and rush

In passion-surge where there is no bulwark

What color are the tears that midnight weeps?

Who shapes the imprint of our deepest sigh?

Or tears the lining from our hidden deep

Who lights the spark of wisdom in our eye?

We are the lone spectators of its whole

As life paints memories upon the soul

© Janet Martin

Isn't that beautiful? and still one more:

What Is Longing?

What is longing, this inferno

Burning, yearning hunger

This groaning internal reaching

For what?

Is longing

Self-induced affliction

Carnal appetite?

Or is it holy hungry

Of things spiritual,

out of sight?

What is longing?

It cries, un-heard

Un-hushed

Weeping in the dead of night

Moaning in the noon-day rush

What is longing?

Is it folly?

or is it real?

Is it perchance, earth’s lonely sorrow

That only Heaven can heal?

© Janet Martin

There are many more beautiful poems at Another Porch, so do drop by and explore. Janet, thank you for the beauty you remind us is all around, by writing what the view is like from your porch, through your eyes.