Thought's While Lying Beneath Summer's Tree

Too soon your fronds of gold will drift

To far-flung hinterlands

No dirge responds; tides rotate, shift

And strip your out-stretched hands

Sad, farewell words my mouth would form

Are solvent in the air

As July’s fingers, bronze, sun-warm

Seduce my idle tear

The passion of my former thought

Grows pensive now, and still

As parched strands of for-get-me-not

Adorn our favorite hill

Where long we lay beneath the spell

Of heaven-tenured June

The carpet leading to farewell

…a honey-suckle swoon

Beyond the sweep of azure deep

Unfathomed eons ‘mass

Ah, this must be where heaven keeps

Life’s moments as they pass

The bud that forged through wood-clenched limb

With verdant tendril-breath

Will soon adorn the somber scrim

Of life’s four-season hearth

The shadow lengthens on the field

Where harvest hangs its fruit

There is no detour; all must yield

To Nature’s absolute

And soon these fronds of gold will drip

Into that vaulted sphere

I feel the brush of July’s lip

Caress my errant tear

© Janet Martin