Where Time Lays Its Golden Halo

Where Time lays its golden halo

Where the chime of bluebell falls

Where frost-fretwork gilds culled fallow

Where ghost-wind and wild goose calls

Where the gambol of day hastens

To night’s gambrel, dark and deep

Where the barrenness of gardens

Blooms with echoes bittersweet

Where the way to daybreak lingers

On opaque beribboned fringe

Until dawn slips phantom fingers

Where earth and heaven unhinge

Where we walk with footsteps slower

‘Neath the cadence of farewell

Where the air is like a flower

And each tree is like a bell

Where the heart is like a harbor

And the harbor, like buffed jade

Where the grape is gleaned from arbors

And the limb weaned of its shade

Where each leaf is like a poem

And each poem pure, unflawed

Where the land is like a forum

Filled with handiwork of God

Where the russet-brindled orchard

Yields its apple-dappled bliss

Where the kiss of death broods, tortured

Autumn Is

© Janet Martin