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Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Of Echoes and Endings





The boast of the meadowland renders its mirth
Where June’s leaf-song lullaby covers the earth
Red mountain-ash garnet gleams bold on the air
A garnish to limbs; cold and scraggly and bare
The skyline is stripped of its verdant appeal
But keen winds are eager with refurbished zeal
Moaning through the woodland in ghostly lament
Victor of the tatters in autumn’s raiment
Yet still slips its haunting into Time’s great urn
Of triumph and trouble never to return
The echoes of summer and silence compete
Where innocence, progress and Providence meet


 
The belles of first autumn fall prey to the hour
Their beauty lies broken beneath wooded bower
Time; are you tyrant or mercy’s masquerade?
As fortune and folly beneath us are laid
And we, stumbling vessels of longing and lust
Tread on our future of dust unto dust
For we like the leaf, soon will render this clay
And only the soul will escape Time’s decay
But hope clings to Hope, as earth’s somnolent girth
A-waits the redemption of spring’s glad re-birth
And though for a moment the fallow is bleak
We trust in the promises buried beneath



The echo of summer may torment our tears
The dance of an hour soon shapes sudden years
The gasp of the flower falls into the dirt
Destiny consumes both life’s joy and its hurt
The reed, stiff, forlorn, braces for winter’s cold
The heart, tattered, torn must still bear to grow old
While kind wisdom kisses the grief in our sighs
And Beauty bestows her most coveted prize
For Time’s phantom power can never possess
The well-spring of love, hope and happiness
Spring, summer, autumn, winter; glaze the sod
On our waltz to the grave; on our journey to God

© Janet Martin





3 comments:

  1. The shift of the seasons caught up in your words. Somehow autumn in all its glory is muted in the knowledge that the winter is coming.Infusing it with a deeper desire to walk closely with God. You capture all this and more. "And we, stumbling vessels of longing and lust tread on our future of dust unto dust."

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  2. This is so lovely--life echoing the turning of the seasons...

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I hope you enjoyed your pause on this porch and thank-you for your visit!