Softly, Once Upon a Summer

You are gone; your cloak of mourning

Splayed in colors tumbled soft

'gainst the place where heaven’s yawning

 Apathy lingers aloft

 

You are gone: slipped through a pasture

Where we didn't bar the gate

Like a wisp of love and laughter

On a frond-and-fallow plate

Naught but pictures framed in echoes

To remind us you were here

Skimming, brimming where the meadows

Wear a weather-beaten cheer

 

Dust, your doggerel of daises

And your lily-limerick

P-f-f-f-t, your afternoon, sweet- hazy

Where cicada sonnets drip

…and the green of virgin blossom

Where we celebrated hope

Lies on the temperate bosom

Of yon season-slathered slope

Once we spilled to dark-soil languor

Dreams rebellious as the wind

Planting in its garden, hunger

We were younger then, and blind

We bemoan Time’s hurry-scurry

Surprised by its changeless law

Meditation is a journey

Of relinquishment and awe

Now we pause where nothing lingers

Long; touch kindly the deluge

Of a free-fall not of fingers

…mist of morrow’s subterfuge

You are gone; mutated montage

That only our thought can see

Softly, once upon a summer

You became a memory

© Janet Martin

...and that is all I have to say about the matter! Happy First Day of Autumn, everyone:)