Like Beggars with a Bit of Bread...(or Sonnet of Almost-winter)

The tree that waved its winsome, wind-song wand

In nature’s pride and joy is stripped of mirth

Its shadow like a gnarled, decrepit hand

Lies still upon the casket of the earth

The weather that once wore us thin with prayer

Then faded into flower-fragrant field

Revives the choristers of frosted air

With feather-strokes upon dawn’s dormant shield

The poet’s verve falters a little, then

Resumes his Task; to preserve Past with pen

We reconcile denial; Time is keen

Its charge a gauntlet that demands response

Where undeterred intent proceeds to wean

The limb of leaf and flower from its sconce

What fools we were to think we would succeed

In masterminding Time’s epitome

The hunger of its clock dwarfs our greed

Sure victor in the spoils of fantasy

And we are all poets as we survey

The aftermath of summer’s laughing day

Moment-montages startle thought where years

Can drain the poet’s pen of ink; its font

Of What Once Was, juxtaposed against fears

Of What Might Disregard our wish and want

The architect of Time and Space immune

To petty fancies; it employs its touch

In laugh-lines that love summer’s sanguine swoon

But soon surrender to winter and such…

The bard, torn between passion’s prose and rhyme

Cannot compose a poem that slows time

© Janet Martin