Ode to Summer's Flower-days...

Now from earth’s hearth of dust and ash Hope’s phoenix spreads its wings

Where berth of Trust becomes a sash of bright and blooming things

It tucks to Past’s eternal ken a tune among its bricks

And clucks like Mother Nature’s hen over Her brood of chicks

And rouses from a crumb of seed, an orchestra of praise

And sutures wounds of want and need with summer’s flower-days

Now ink can quench its thirst for pink from fount of flower-bell

And Wanderlust can pause, immersed in mauve and golden swell

As days that long we longed for ripple like a stippled sweep

Of silver sun-kissed corn-leaf seas July-high and knee-deep

And Hunger is an ocean where the shoreline is the sky

That swallows up emotion like a twinkle in Time’s eye

Now work becomes a pleasant task on canvases of bloom

Where Eden, though we didn’t ask, is mirrored in each plume

And we no longer mourn as much for The Sweet By and By

Because now touch and such is easier to satisfy

Where everywhere we look we see a glimpse of Better Place

As bare toes wiggle in the dirt that bursts with summer-grace

Now, just a word of caution; for this forge of flower-cheer

Is soon blurred like the action of the hand that wipes the tear

So, lest the Best of Days (July) slip by midst much to-do

Let’s chase the butterfly and stop to smell the roses too

And do Such Beauty justice with a second and third look

Where soon this loom of dust is drained to pages in a book

© Janet Martin