Live Well...or, Of Moment-deft Unbuttoning...

Live well and do not rush too fast past miracles of life

The handiwork of Deity unfolds and earth is rife

With sundry season splendor and with sundry season need

Live well; for who of us can tell how far time’s path will lead?

This gold and gray of come-what-may is but a gilded thread

While we of Adam’s seed labor and plead for bites of bread

We plant a little garden and we pray a little prayer

God grants to us His mercy where His footfalls fill the air

Live well and do not waste with haste, the taste of moment-gifts

For soon the tune of afternoon is like the leaf that drifts

Beneath the limbs that rang with hymns of summer’s sanguine hour

Before the winnowing of whispers softly stole its flow’r

This draught that swells from wells of grace is not an endless quaff

Its gossamer effusion bathes the fingertips that doff

With moment-deft unbuttoning the garb that clothes the shell

Of this one life we have, my love; we ought to live it well

© Janet Martin