Caught By Seasoned Surprise

Somber earth slumbers beneath umber quilt

Summer, then autumn slips soft from each stem

Color climaxes, dims, strips limbs of lilt

Shallows replenished with leaf-diadem

Past pursues us, love, or oh, so it seems

Draining time’s riptide to rose-mist requiems

Flowers, save for a few late-bloomers, fade

Farewell finds footholds in fresh-fashioned sighs

Hours are a camouflaged promenade

Where tick by tock’s give-and-take synchronize

Sometimes the rhyme-scheme of Time’s pantomimes

Vexes the vagabond learning its lines

Season-song silvers the sedge by the fence

Blue finds new hues as dusk’s backdrop adheres

To branches, stark in their bare-naked stance

Where the romance of leaf-dance disappears

Darling, did you hear its fleet-footed fling?

Because frankly dear, I did not hear a thing

© Janet Martin

If You Were I and I Were You...

 This was yesterday...

She thought it was a perfect coolish-autumn day to tromp through  the woods

and he thought it was a perfect coolish-autumn day to turn up the heat and have a big sleep.

If you were I

And I were you

Then when we two

Would get together

I suppose

…on second thought

We still would not

Understand each other

Any better

© Janet Martin

Of Leaf-song Spent...

The Brigadoon

Of middle June

And cricket-tune

And harvest moon

Is past

Fall's frosted stills

Mull heady thrills

And ruddy spills

Where summer’s frills

Are cast

The air is deep

A sea of sleep

Where seasons sweep

And eons steep

Its core

As Time is bent

With moments lent

Beneath a tent

Of leaf-song spent

Once more

© Janet Martin

Little Leaf-dirge...

Ah, little leaf, your capsheaf, silent sod

Alone on autumn's begging lair you lie

Where no one sees your still demise, save God

Or some fall-drunken drifter passing by

To kneel perchance beside your nameless berth

And thank God for your little dance on earth

© Janet Martin

Where One Seed Fell...

 

I love wordles though its been a long time since I've tried one!
The Sunday Whirl offers a weekly prompt

For
all the
thousand,
thousand ways
that birth is spent 
(its matter... Days)
The only plant that fully thrives
Is grown when seeds break as one gives
So, when we wake and bounce from bed
then delve into the day ahead
We should plant well,
for who can tell
What bloom
will sprout
where
one
seed
fell

Janet~

Here, In the Bloom of Dying...

Here, in woodland cathedral

Here, in a hall of leaves

Flowers are falling, autumnal

Petal from rainbow eaves

Here, in the bloom of dying

Wind-song and quiet vying

From lofty loom soft-sighing

Nature, its glory grieves

Here, in the halo of wooing

Here, in the harrowed fields

We witness Time undoing

What nothing mortal shields

Here, like the corpse of laughter

From tow’ring coppice-rafter

Into the ever-after

Nature its glory yields

Here, in a world of wonder

Here, in a swirl red-gold

Spirals spring’s full-grown plunder

Into earth’s umber hold

Here, in a spree of splendors

Nature its tree surrenders

While its Caretaker renders

Nature its glory folds

© Janet Martin

Victoria and I had a lemon-tea party in the neighbour's bush yesterday...

(it was going to be a sit-and-sip, but turned out to be a tromp-and-a-h-h/awe!!,

because we both felt there was so much to see in so little time) 

Waiting is Hard

Waiting is hard
Its want inspired
By something Now does not impart
Through its request
Waiting will test
Endurance of both hand and heart

Waiting is hard
Its passage barred
With no peek-hole from Here to There
A wall of sorts
Where Time cavorts
While we resort to fear or prayer

This waiting game
Is much the same
For young or old stayed in its Must
 Then some of us
Will fret and fuss
And some will learn patience and trust

Waiting is hard
But its reward
If we learn what waiting can teach
Will make us far
More thankful for
That Something still beyond our reach


Janet Martin~


 Wait on the Lord:
be of good courage,
and he shall strengthen thine heart:
wait, I say, on the Lord.
Ps.27:14

Scythe-song

Faster than ever dusk severs the day

Nothing can keep its blue bayou at bay

High-sky of summer soon lowers its boon

Seasons fall prey to the scythe of the moon

Hearts are like harbours that hold in their cove

Murmurs and mistrals of hunger and love

Taking and leaving can strew through the years

Multi-hued medleys of laughter and tears

Sometimes in autumn the valor of life

Keens in our bearing its double-edged knife

Firsthand we witness Time’s winnowing way

Nothing we do can keep winter at bay

© Janet Martin