Of Baited Breath Summer-y

 Making the most of moment-by-moment is the most any of us can do!

Yesterday laid a carpet of love-songs beneath thought's touch...

Beneath the fading valor of gold-green and buxom-blue

(Where we with baited breath anticipated bloom-spun hue)

Beneath the purply pallor of a gallery, gleaned, bound

Thought sifts through echoes drifting like leaves chased across the ground

…of green-grass streets tattooed with bare-feet pitter-pat, carefree

Of brook that curled and swirled and chattered onward to the sea

Where tried touch-taste of ‘let’s not waste a drip, a sip, a crumb'

Melds what we held as 'moment' to forever's yester-sum

The rainbow thoroughfare of Here to There is softly swept

Of all but tattered sheaf where fall is not quite soldered yet

That freckled, speckled under-tow of come and go collects

What we are so intent upon and no one resurrects

Smooth, gallivanting, tick-tock-chanting play of day to day

(Though we were warned about its quiet clout) glissades away

And where we stood, its baited breath and child-glad cheers and claps

Are nothing more than journal pages cradled in our laps

…or silver-glimmered murmurs of summer-loved poetry

Ah, by the time you read this Fall will have felled summer’s spree

And gardens, once a-beam with daydreams slumber-tucked, song-sheared

And flower-hues we longed for will have flared, dimmed, disappeared

Suave, silk-slippered Seductress, sunbeam-splashed and shadow-lashed

Wreaks havoc in the heart where oft fancy and plain fact clashed

Where even now she slips her fingers through thought, bitter-sweet

And beckons us to dance upon the sands beneath our feet

...for it is never 'nothing now', that world of what has been

Though it has slipped beyond the reach of touch, it paints a scene

To tease upon a wintry afternoon, the soulful gaze

And prime the heart with baited breath for morrow's yesterdays

© Janet Martin

 ...and another fall-favorite of favorites poem