Way To Live

Snared sea-song spills to green-sheen hills where reaching corn-rows blow

And chamomile gilds ditches like drained vials of early snow

Queen Ann’s Lace graces fence-lines, streams in lavish white-frothed swoon

That rushes through lush underbrush and hush of summer-noon

The doorway to For-nevermore is ethereal, yet rife

With flower-gardens; metaphors of ‘what is a man’s life?’

The wind lolls, low and slowly in a languid serenade

Across wheat fields a-ripple like a golden-stippled lake

Those days that long we longed for are unchained; we are half-scared

To run too fast or walk too slow on this that none have snared

Of lupine-lay and fresh-mown hay and clover-mead; bare feet

Skimming the sluggish creek that loiters 'mongst pale meadow-sweet

The clock opens the locks that kept a world of dreams on hold

Anticipation yields its fruit in zinnia, marigold

And lest we miss the best that life and summer have to give

We vow to find a slower, sweeter, kinder way to live

© Janet Martin