Of Dew-drops, Threads and other Transient Miracles

This can be read as individual sonnets or as one entire poem

We cannot place a cup beneath Time’s spout

To garner moments dripping to the air

September swoons; its triumph and despair

A taste of bitter sweetness in the mouth

Of what has passed, what is and what will be

Desire and dismay; dissonant blend

As we are torn twixt beginning and end

A soulful song of clashing symmetry

Who can foretell a season’s destiny

Of tender greeting and tearful farewell?

Love’s blissful joy is sorrow’s infancy

The nucleus of autumn’s parting knell

A bud cannot be hastened into flower

Nor bloom beyond its brief allotted hour

***

Soundless, the leaf-note drops from choirs spent

Silent the foot-falls of a summer pass

Yet, there is not a drop within the glass

We lift to snare its transient filament

The cup of grief and gladness overflows

Its wine pressed from life’s fair and finest field

Bravely we drink its blood and honey yield   

Clenching its agonies; the thorn, the rose

We cannot choose; the beggar or the king

What life imbues beyond our meager touch

The vanity of man can never clutch

The Power holding Time’s elusive string

But common flesh treads humble common sod

Where everything is nothing without God

***

The grasp of life’s profound fragility

Demands a keen awareness of the thread

That separates the living from the dead

Translucent strand holding eternity

September’s dew lays heavy on earth’s brow

Its dazzling shroud a brief and transient sheath

As Time inhales its gleam with eager breath

And we inhale the startling gasp of Now

This pulsing path will never reimburse

One moment of its pleasure or its pain

Thus, we absorb its tender-sweet refrain

Within its plaintive music we immerse

Our senses; faith and fear conflict, align

In this brief foot in front of foot design

***

The Storehouse of Time’s portioned mysteries

Dispersed in moment-drops upon this sphere

Sparkling in our laughter and our tear

Is but a microscopic speck of centuries

Our feeble minds can never comprehend

The brevity of this four-season glance

Though three-score years and ten we dream and dance

Or four score years and more; its wink will end

As summer folds into the arms of fall

And youth progresses into middle-age

To contemplate life’s turning of the page

With hastened disregard for summer’s call

We recognize anew life’s Higher Pow’r

For Time is but the dew on Heaven’s flow’r

© Janet Martin