Showing posts with label September Poem. Show all posts
Showing posts with label September Poem. Show all posts

Saturday, September 30, 2023

So Long, September


This is always a sentimental day of the year...So long, September!
Swept away in a flurry of preparation and preserving!

September- the thick of
Earth's heaven 
of harvest!

So long, September’s misty morn...



Like a postlude, to tune the dark
With ballads slipping like a tear
No lips can kiss away...


Tonight's dessert awaiting a mound of freshly-whipped cream,
before heading to Jim's mom and sister, who are cooking the rest of supper!



So long, sweet sweep of summer spent
Of green-leaf secrets whispered ere
The air grew heavy with the scent
Of farewell’s pungent atmosphere
Ere daylight’s dusky hours fell
Faster beneath gavels deep blue
Where younger hunger tolled a bell
Of inevitable adieu

So long, September’s misty morn
Futile to stoke Past’s embers, oh
Or don a countenance forlorn
Where seasons always come and go
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to greet, a time to part
A time to laugh, a time to weep
And gather harvests for the heart

…fragments of color, peach and plum
Of hummingbird and butterfly
A petal-and-echo-spectrum
From summer full of days gone by
Of dahlia-pom-poms, vermillion
Of fields trembling with cricket lays
Of harvest moon medallion
Dangling above our raptured gaze

Where compositions of so-long
Rouse rhapsodies no pen can spell
Like the teal essence of sea-song
Rolling within, swell after swell
Like a postlude, to tune the dark
With ballads slipping like a tear
No lips can kiss away. Ah, hark!
Is that a falling leaf I hear?

So long, well-trampled garden path
By expeditions to and fro
To heap baskets with aftermath
That always awes and thrills us so
With toil and mercy’s dividends
Praise God from whom all blessing flows
For every break of day that wends
To so-long’s certain curtain-close

So long, purple wild aster art
And amber ambience that gleams
Like fresh-pressed cider, sweet and tart
To tease eager taste-buds with dreams
That, in spite of what time may take
It kindly, generously grants
Un-stoppered wonderment to wake
A time to sing, a time to dance

So long, so long, September-love
Of fading flower-serenade
Of clinging to a thinning glove
We wear on earth, but heaven-made
Of places we never quite found
And some we did, and never sought
So long, so long, September, crowned
With apple-red and golden rod

© Janet Martin






Friday, September 22, 2023

Wonder-dust or Swansong or September...



It had to be...a heart-and-soul Swansong!
Happy, happy, happy, happy
Last Day of Summer 2023


Your light that splays like amber glaze and bathes the earth in mellow mist...


Your wind-tossed bars where aster-stars twinkle like shattered amethyst...


Your lanes that wind, goldenrod lined, to lure us from the beaten track...



Your paradise for butterflies...


...and tousled wild-bloom bric-a-brac


Your pendulum of pear and plum drip-dripping from our lips and chins...


your brisker air that starts to wear the shriek of jay...


and honk of geese...


Your kitchen heat, pungent and sweet with basil, garlic, pickling spice
Your garden dish that makes me wish somehow, we could live each meal twice...





Your humble toil of mercy's spoil like contrails of an upward spark...
(a photo so we remember how tall the sweet corn grew this year!!!!)



Your orchard stroll that thrills the soul with apple-dappled dreams come true...




Your light that splays like amber glaze and bathes the earth in mellow mist
Your wind-tossed bars where aster-stars twinkle like shattered amethyst
Your garnet splash of mountain ash berries against backdrops of blue
Your orchard stroll that thrills the soul with apple-dappled dreams come true

Your heady blur of lavender, of marigold and cricket lays
Your subtle change as you estrange vistas of younger, summer days
Your pendulum of pear and plum drip-dripping from our lips and chins
A glockenspiel that starts to peal with farewell's reel as fall begins  

Your lanes that wind, goldenrod lined, to lure us from the beaten track
Your paradise for butterflies, and tousled wild bloom bric-a-brac
Your hugs that war with tugs that roar with Bygone’s foregone victory
Your tango of longing and love, where mulled breeze strums the yellow tree

Your brisker air begins to wear the shriek of jay and honk of geese
And in our hearts a hunger starts to prepare us for your release
And the so-long, as your swansong suffuses morning, noon and night
Relinquishment sublimely rent with tender grief and sheer delight 

Your kitchen heat, pungent and sweet with basil, garlic, pickling spice
Your garden dish that makes me wish somehow, we could live each meal twice
Your humble toil of mercy's spoil like contrails of an upward spark
Your melodies that waft and tease a world tucked beneath early dark

Your tangerine and gold and green as gourds are heaped in bright array
Your crisp hello where dawn’s tableau gleams like a silver serving tray
Your rains that spill from hill to hill, your chill that kindles wanderlust
Your pleasure of so-much-to-love before you turn to wonder-dust

September, you run wonder through us like shafts of sunlight through leaves 
You rush the skin that we are in with joys gathered like harvest sheaves 
While we begin to sense the thinning, winning ways of days of yore
You wake in us an ache because of so much to be thankful for 


© Janet Martin

Your tangerine and gold and green as gourds are heaped in bright array...

Your crisp hello where dawn’s tableau gleams like a silver serving tray...

Your rains that spill from hill to hill, your chill that kindles wanderlust...

Your pleasure of so-much-to-love before you turn to wonder-dust...



Yesterday's 'canning-first'-plum sauce! SO yummy







Tuesday, September 12, 2023

September's Soul-Storm


This is the kind of poem I cannot rush...

September’s tent is gray then blue and apple-dappled, where


Pungent scents of surrender’s hues hang heavy on the air....


As evidence of summer’s curtain close intensifies
In blush of sedum’s dusty rose...


 and rush of butterflies...


In rusty-singed zinnia-rainbows,


... in tardier sunrise


Goldenrod tapers flicker, undaunted by fits of rain...


And footsteps start to hurry through dawn’s barely-parted gates
Tomato-plum-pear flurry fills jars, crocks, pots, pans and plates...
(a few recipes below)

*Glug-glug-blip-blop, the steaming canning-kettle seems to say...


Frost-flavoured innuendos start to infiltrate green glade


As cricket-song crescendos in an ardent serenade
A vibrato that ebbs and flows into a subtle fade...




September’s tent is gray then blue and apple-dappled, where
Pungent scents of surrender’s hues hang heavy on the air
As evidence of summer’s curtain close intensifies
In blush of sedum’s dusty rose and rush of butterflies
In rusty-singed zinnia-rainbows, in tardier sunrise

September’s bliss is bittersweet, aster-embellished grief
Happiness and heartache compete, bloom-beauty is so brief
Frost-flavoured innuendos start to infiltrate green glade
As cricket-song crescendos in an ardent serenade
A vibrato that ebbs and flows into a subtle fade

Goldenrod tapers flicker, undaunted by fits of rain
Birdfeeder patrons bicker over dinner-bits of grain
While squirrels dart and scurry and harvest-hum escalates
And footsteps start to hurry through dawn’s barely-parted gates
Tomato-plum-pear flurry fills jars, crocks, pots, pans and plates

September authors sorrows joy is privileged to bear
Futile to suffer morrow’s unaccomplished weight of care
While dahlias beam, and cornfields gleam and backroad haunts beguile
While summer’s remnant hours stream beneath noon’s sky wide smile
And flower-bowers beckon dreamers to loiter awhile

Glug-glug-blip-blop, the steaming canning-kettle seems to say
Too busy to stop for too long to dream the day away
Though it would be a terrible pity to never pause
To be a duty-rebel and revel in Now because
The tree the breeze dishevels will soon wear the leaf that was

September seems to keenly whet time’s teeming undertow
With destinies that we forget while lost in June’s hello
A cello I cannot quite see is playing Fur Elise
A green and yellow melody of love’s fond agonies
Rolls, nay tolls from a welkin belfry through fields and hills and trees

September is a poem that the poet cannot rush
It feels a bit like coming home, a Voice that whispers 'hush'
Yet kindles in the bosom a war-cry nobody hears
A medley culled from blossoms felled and held in yesteryears
An arch that leads to autumn, through which summer disappears

© Janet Martin


due to a bumper crop of summer squash  and an
almost tomato-crop failure
 someone suggested trying zucchini salsa, so I did!
it's delicious!!
(I used yellow and green squash and seems to have worked)
If you like sweet heat you might want to try this!


Zucchini Salsa

INGREDIENTS
10cups zucchini, peeled & shredded
4onions, chopped
2green peppers, chopped
2red peppers, chopped
1⁄4cup pickling salt
1tablespoon pickling salt
2tablespoons dry mustard
1tablespoon garlic powder
1tablespoon cumin
2tablespoons red pepper flakes
1teaspoon nutmeg
1teaspoon pepper
5cups chopped ripe tomatoes
2tablespoons cornstarch
12ounces tomato paste

Method:
Day one:
In a large bowl combine; 
Zucchini, onions, green pepper, red pepper and the salt 
Mix together cover and let stand over night.

Day two.
Next day rinse, drain well and put into a large pot then add
 mustard, garlic, cumin, vinegar, brown sugar, pepper flakes, salt,
cornstarch, nutmeg, pepper, 1 tablespoon salt, 
tomatoes and tomato paste.
Bring to a boil and simmer for 15 minutes.
Pour into sterilized jars and seal.
Water bath jars for 15 minutes.

***

Now dessert!
recipe two;
Pear-Plum Crisp


Wash, peel, (optional) pare, pit,
approx. 7 cups fruit into baking pan. I used 8X12 pyrex pan.


mix 1/2 cup sugar
2 TBSP flour
1/2 teas. cinnamon 
1/4 teas. each of cloves, nutmeg and ginger
Toss with fruit

and top with 
Topping
Mix 1 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup flour
1/3 cup br. sugar
then blend in 1/3 cup soft butter

top and bake at 350F till bubbly and golden, approx. 30 min.

(after sampling the unbaked version I feel safe to say-it's scrumptious!)

while dahlias beam...