As All Things Go...

When hills are crowned with gold where once green held our eager gaze

When picnic-afternoons we dreamed about hold yesterdays

When harvest-hymns abound in sounds of toil and thankfulness

And flower-heads grow heavy with the spoil of morrow’s tress

When dusk is like a cloak that draws its blue across the air

Then falls across earth’s shoulders as the moon climbs heaven’s stair

When cricket song trills all day long and first leaves strew the walk

When bumbling bees go tumbling from zinnia to hollyhock

When hours becomes treasured like a prize we cannot keep

As each becomes the measure of the sighs we smile and weep

When we sweep petals from the porch and pluck fruit from the vine

And pause a little longer in the preciousness of time

When we have felled its moments, smelled its rose and held its tear

Oh, then we know as all things go that summer’s end is near

© Janet Martin