Sentimental Jargon

Across the field steel-rivers blow

And wield a weapon full of snow

Where supper soup and firewood

Have never sounded quite so good

And I will make a pot of tea

Then will you sip a cup with me?

And shall we gently reminisce

O’er ebbs and flows of That and This?

The Warden of a formless clock

Is turning the key in a lock

That soon will seal the gold and gray

Of twenty-seventeen away

Darling, what have we learned from it

Or genuinely earned from it

Will something in its give and take

Soothe farewell’s sentimental ache

And when on soundless hinges Time

Rings out the old year with a chime

That ushers in what none have met

Will we feel hope or sad regret?

Sometimes it seems to me the years

Are but a succession of ‘Cheers’

With a few baffled blinks between

Cold winter’s white, gold summer’s green

Across the field steel-fingered bards

Shake feather-down on quiet yards

Where supper-soup and firewood

Have never sounded quite so good

© Janet Martin