A Toast To The Inevitable...

The yard is like a fall postcard

 A picture-poem of joy and grief

As summer, pink and petal-starred

Unravels in the shape of leaf

To gardens stripped of gourd and plume

And fellowship of flower-chum

Where the benediction of bloom

Depicts the quickness of time’s sum

Sometimes it seems that seasons slip

Ever more swiftly from our touch

How deft day’s darling diamonds drip

Into the vastness of past’s clutch

And where the deep green pasture sprang

To lure our feet into its fray

The sere slope steeped in smoky tang

Echoes with steps of yesterday

October’s epitaph of leaves

Is chased about by bullish breeze

Its fills ditches, fencelines and eaves

With nature’s pilfered piracies

Where tree-torches that lit the hills

Are doffed and dimmed to somber hue

The scarlet maple yields its frills

The red sumac surrenders too

…and earth is like a soldered sweep

The keeper of each fond farewell

That seeps into its umber deep

And weeps upon dusk’s tolling knell

Beneath a sheath of crepe and stars

The stricken heath of autumn lies

While we embrace its aches and scars

And toast Time’s purple-tinted sighs

© Janet Martin