On once-upon-a-time’s green hills
She lays an umber shroud
She wanders through bloom-spangled rills
And cross-hatches faint cloud
She climbs through gates, splays shadow-mates
On canvases of grass
With cinnamon and garnet shades
She gilds leafed overpass
She lingers in the tangled nook
Of sweet vermilion streams
She tarries where summer forsook
The brook where drifters dream
She dawdles in the purple dell
And decorates earth’s halls
With remnants of a fairer shell
That fell from summer’s walls
She touches orchards with a frond
Dipped in nature’s best red
She shushes thread-bare vagabonds
And tucks them into bed
Soft-slow she gathers up her gown
A strange, majestic train
Of leaf-shaped echoes drifting down
To we who yet remain
© Janet Martin
