But oh, The Afternoon

The afternoon meanders like a brook in mid-July

It eddies through fringed maple-windows blue with bits of sky

It trickles where time’s humor smiles from unbarred isles aloft

And sparkles like a diamond coronet, yet, oh, so soft

Some think God spills His rarest ink in pink sunset and rise

But I have read fairest of letters on afternoon skies

Its ink so blue one can see through to on and on above

Its well so deep it seems to mirror metaphors for love

  

A meant-for-more-than-toiling epoch cupped twixt noon and night

An afternoon is surely a first-class, green-grass delight

Where haste begs to be gentled just enough to taste the hour

Borne from the bud of morn into a full and ample flow’r

Its field is like a yellow lake fenced by treed silhouette

It dallies where a chair, a book, a cup of tea is set

And oft we overlook this gift dressed in meek beggar’s spoil

Or trudge begrudgingly across its albatross of toil

White cotton-candy clouds appease the one who dares to lie

Beneath blue-collar luxuries; a wide, untrodden sky

A miniature vacation midst love’s common kiss and dance

Of to-do lists; an afternoon runs rife with life’s romance

Ah, soon its lilt like petals will spill into blue good-bye

Its rippling roster cradled, flushed with vesper lullaby

But until then, come, revel in time’s dear and daily boon

And dream a little dream upon sweet summer’s afternoon

© Janet Martin