June Is...

June is a poet’s quill

An inkwell filled with flowers

From dawn to dusk its ballads spill

From beauty’s bloom-bent bowers

To render breathless awe

Where Splendor overflows

Like a buffer to Murphy’s law

Where we suffer his woes

June is a gallery

Of frameless pictures hung

Showcasing the diversity

Of One second to none

While squires of low degree

Grapple with rebel ink

To wrangle into poetry

Green-gold-blue-purple-pink

June is a lover’s quarrel

Between the hand and heart

Duty tethers the hand to toil

While beauty spills its art

And fills the heart with fires

Edict cannot suppress

Until verse satisfies desire’s

Unbridled happiness

June is heaven’s foothills

Thirty days deep and wide

Where azure height and green fount spills

Across the countryside

It beckons to the Bard

Who knows she cannot sleep

Until she gathers into word

A memento to keep

© Janet Martin

 I wish you could join me to 

hear the orchestra of flowers playing as

robin, chipping sparrow, gold finch and chickadee 

tweet-tweet and trill their little hearts out outside my window...

now, one more picture because...

last night when I drained the bathtub the toilet and kitchen sink started gurgling 😢

...if all goes as planned

this will be a mound of dirt by the end of the day...boo-hoo!

Stay tuned😐

 (I did plant some of the herbs in pots for a reason

and this area is always planted with the awareness

that every so many years it will be uprooted completely.)

and here is the pinnacle of all June poems

What Is So Rare As A Day in June

And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays;
Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;
Every clod feels a stir of might,
An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
And, groping blindly above it for light,
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;
The flush of life may well be seen
Thrilling back over hills and valleys;
The cowslip startles in meadows green,
The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice,
And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean
To be some happy creature's palace;
The little bird sits at his door in the sun,
Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,
And lets his illumined being o'errun
With the deluge of summer it receives;
His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings,
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings;
He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,
In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best?

Now is the high-tide of the year,
And whatever of life hath ebbed away
Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer,
Into every bare inlet and creek and bay;
Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it,
We are happy now because God wills it;
No matter how barren the past may have been,
'Tis enough for us now that the leaves are green;
We sit in the warm shade and feel right well
How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell;
We may shut our eyes but we cannot help knowing
That skies are clear and grass is growing;
The breeze comes whispering in our ear,
That dandelions are blossoming near,
That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing,
That the river is bluer than the sky,
That the robin is plastering his house hard by;
And if the breeze kept the good news back,
For our couriers we should not lack;
We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing,
And hark! How clear bold chanticleer,
Warmed with the new wine of the year,
Tells all in his lusty crowing!

Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how;
Everything is happy now,
Everything is upward striving;
'Tis as easy now for the heart to be true
As for grass to be green or skies to be blue,
'Tis for the natural way of living:
Who knows whither the clouds have fled?
In the unscarred heaven they leave not wake,
And the eyes forget the tears they have shed,
The heart forgets its sorrow and ache;
The soul partakes the season's youth,
And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe
Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth,
Like burnt-out craters healed with snow. 

James Russell Lowell