Of Flowers and Futility

We cannot quench the tide that steals the hour

Or press back into bud unfolded bloom

Miniscule moment; mute and mammoth pow’r

Of jubilee and weeping by the tomb

As on this surging once-upon-a-time

We live love’s poetry of now-to-then

In sonnet, free verse, stilted lilt and rhyme

Of flowers thrilling, spilling to the glen

Darling, how futile is the yearning tear

Can anyone afford to stand and stare?

While moments pour into the atmosphere

And none of us can go from here to there

There are no compromises with a clock

Let’s brave the craving wave of tick and tock

The flower of the field must fall away

And we are like the little flowers too

Youth surely is the smiling month of May

Of greenest greens and laughter’s bluest blue

The essence of a moment stuns our grasp

Its staccato a chant of year on year

As autumn’s presence severs soft, we clasp

The echo of those dances we hold dear

Darling, the gossamer of gold and gray

Entwines its tendrils round about the heart

And even as the petals fall away

We recognize the hope its seeds impart

Turning our faces to Time’s gale we brave

Its treasure-trove travail toward the grave

How futile then to weep for what is not

Or urge into fruition yesterday

The hunger of an ever-pining thought

Is but to purge the passion of today

Darling, the door to yesterday is barred

Its farewell borne on midnight’s begging breeze

Relinquishing fragmented memories

Like leaves that scuttle over winter’s yard

Frolic of freedom spirals to the sky

Love’s monumental Rembrandts sealed in thought

Of babies in our arms before the cry

Of something stronger drew them from their cot

We wave from windows as our whispers burn

Kissing the air with prayer for their return

© Janet Martin

I sort of 'puttered' at this poem throughout the day ...at the end the last stanza I wrote became the first stanza and vice-versa