Mid-night Merlot

Now daylight climbs those far-off stairs leading to prostrate past

The whistling lamplighter of stars tends to his twilight task

Now stammering and clamoring and all its kindred-mates

Muffle, caught in the shuffle of moon-beams on silver slates

Now barefoot boys are stripped of noise; silk slumber-streams unfurl

While dragons holed in horror-haunts their phantom terrors hurl

And all the colors of the world are black and charcoal-gray

Where autumn is a martinet of orange-gold-red by day

The baron is a beggar and the poet is a lord

Word-wisps are frigates set adrift where dark of dark is poured

And even though we close our eyes the charter of a thought

Is never stilled or held at bay by what sight sees as naught

Drink deep; vintage of velvet froth is pungent as it drips

Hard, hard upon the heart of hearts and soft upon the lips

Nothing of life is salvaged save the flowers that we toss

Into life's vat of memories; love’s soul-sweet albatross

© Janet Martin

Summer is never really over because...

...change the season in your veins by raising glass to lip and tilting summer in.
Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury