Slumber-song

Autumn Lies Still…

Long the lazy laughter of its wooded hill and steep

Would lull the little boy or girl or mother fast asleep

But now the dark is empty of its softly sweeping sigh

The wide-flung window shuttered where Time open, shuts her eye

For night still bears its morning and the morning, afternoon

The tree that bore the hungry bud will sing new anthems soon

Do not despair although the air is charged with darker hours

The aftermath of what awaits will lead us back to flowers

Autumn lies still…

The gleaming rill is dappled with leaf-notes; its bank soft-lined

With amber-feathered echoes of what summer left behind

A marathon of memories and moments charge the air

Composing a strange montage of both triumph and despair

…where once we were the children splashing wind-kissed and footloose

Through leaves without much thought to hours or Time’s tightening noose

But oh, deeper appreciation of each season’s good and ill

Invites us to live, laugh and love where now autumn lies still

© Janet Martin