Do You Hear It?

Listen, the shriek of blue-jay cries

Listen, implores the leaf that lies

Where summer swept the earth and then

Let autumn have its way again

Listen, intones the wind that moans

Across frost fields and cobblestones

Listen, the plume pleads with bowed head

As earth with death of bloom is wed

Listen, beckons the barren tree

Listen, cautions the stricken lea

Listen, the sound of silence swells

And seeps to winnowed woods and dells

Listen, the wide world seems to wail

Listen, to nature’s parable

Listen, to what The Psalmist says

About the sum of mankind’s days

Listen, the shriek of blue-jay cries

Listen, implores the leaf that lies

Beneath the skies where winds cajole

The dust-to-dust of all but Soul

Listen, ah, can you hear the tear
As dark is rent by first light's air
Listen, ah, can you hear the toll
Of all that passes...but the Soul

© Janet Martin

 For He knows our frame; He is mindful that we are dust.

As for man, his days are like grass— 

he blooms like a flower of the field;

when the wind has passed over, it vanishes,

 and its place remembers it no more.

Psalm 103:14-16 

For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, 

but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.

For, “All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flowers of the field; 

 the grass withers and the flowers fall

  but the word of the Lord stands forever.” 

And this is the word that was proclaimed to you.

1 Peter 1:23-25