December's Day

Hard, hard, beneath our feet silk-soft the lofty season slips

It strips the lushness from the land like laughter from its lips

The swelling harvest disappears; December’s day is stark

Where echoes waft like silver snowflakes strumming early dark

The boulevard is brushed with brittle scuttle-song of leaf

The pasture-land is hushed; its little bloom in gathered sheaf

And thought is like a room that tries to hold what it cannot

December’s day the skin and bone of time’s tittle and jot

How hardly we have held the Thing that melts within our clutch

How deftly day and night can wean beneath our very touch

A lifetime; always giving us what we can never keep

December’s day like a mother singing her child to sleep

Still, still the skylines blush, the rush of tick and tock deploys

Another round of push and pull to vex life’s grievous joys

Where holding on is always the prelude to letting go

Each climax fades; December’s day a passive afterglow

© Janet Martin