It's Summertime

We are past July's half-way mark...doesn't that make your summer-heart lurch a little?!!

It’s summertime; 'neath lilt of vine we leap from day to day

Like steppingstones laid through a sparkling, swirling waterway

And try to find in daily grind a little of the joy

We knew in days long left behind, of carefree girl and boy

So we ease up the reins and chains that bind us to the plow

Say, whoa, Nellie, slow down Nellie, easy, easy now

For somehow time takes to full gallop over misty morn

Where wheat fields toss their glossy manes until their flow is shorn

Where flowers hoist their choicest plume while we, with mouths agape

Are overcome with worship where bud-miracles take shape

And we long for the longer days we knew when we were young

For days that stretched into the blue through meadows heaven-hung

With nothing more to do than peer into each butter-cup

And tip the dew from chalices where midnight-fairies sup

And kick the dust into a storm of wanderlust at large

And climb like lusty sailors onto a green-garden barge

To sail beneath the willow-tree that sighed with sheer content

Whilst shadowing the grassy sea with lacy filament

Where now the wings we spread are feathered with matters of fact

So much to weigh us down if we have no plan of attack

To help us make the merry most of days, now half-the-length

(a faith-plan of attack offers a sure tower of strength)

And in the middle of the muddle we learn how to pause

How to find beauty in a world so full of glaring flaws

How to savour fond flavours, clover-petal’s sugar-tips

Re-tasting childhood’s summer in our hearts and on our lips

And how to hold a moment like a fragile butterfly

Because we’ve learned how swift and suave summer can flutter by

And so we stop to listen to the toll of flower-bells

And fold our weathered wings to listen to the soulful knell

Of twilight tumbling through pink palisades propped on the west

To gather up another summer day into Past’s nest

And tug at tender chords tied to the rhythm and the rhyme

Of ebb and flow and high and low of dear, old summer-time

© Janet Martin