Sonnet of Farewell

The aching twist of ‘knowing’ hovers low

Against the languid mellow yellow day

Over the hill a breath of moments flow

Stealing another gasp of life away

Bloom by falling bloom the moments pass

One lonely cricket serenades the hour

As August surges swiftly through its glass

Laden with tears of summer’s faded flow’r

I shed my own; Time’s unrelenting pace

Plucks summer’s thinning shroud from my embrace

***

The solo cricket-lay is amplified

Into the hush its chirping cantos swell   

Filling the shadow-lengthened countryside

With affirmation of summer’s farewell

Where latent hints of gold and scarlet brood

Beneath the placid flush of sighing green

Too soon the gale will howl through rustling wood

Stripping the petal-garb from nature’s queen

I too feel stripped: Time is a brute uncouth

It snatches up the remnant of my youth

***

Breath by breath and tick by ticking tock

The fullest hour shrinks and disappears

The rigid order of Time’s austere clock

Expands its swift demise to days and years

The goldenrod replaces daffodil

But soon it drops its gaudy, burnished plume

Surrendering to autumn’s painted chill

Thus seasons file across earth’s living-room

I too surrender; pleading with Time is vain

And if it wills, summer will come again

© Janet Martin

Thoughts and sounds of the day and evening...