While We Were Picking Flowers...

You came so soon; wrapped in the croon of zephyr over graves

And we, caught up within the tune of sunny afternoons

Or rain-song on the garden, or the breaking of the waves

Across the shore, were startled by your sure and subtle swoon

The bark, swelling with virgin bud; with hope untried and chaste

Has borne a summer’s worth of evenings and all its moons   

As passion, wild and wonderful in soft enchanted haste

Drifts to that place where ever still the wanton zephyr croons

Were you already there within the first taste of the fruit?

This tender-sweet awareness of seasons, of Time and age

Did you fill Eve with sudden sorrow as she understood

How swift and silently the song of summer seals its page?

You came so soon; no encore, just a wafting overture

Of echoes where the brink of autumn and winter a-wait

While we were picking flowers, caught in summer’s kind allure

We did not turn to see a hand closing the garden gate

© Janet Martin