Autumn Memento

 

Shriek-shriek of jays scores autumn’s morn 

Honk-honk of wild-geese overhead 

Stitches a ragged vee-shaped thread 

Above frost-faded fields of corn 

They tug at strings wrapped round its art 

Then bound to berths deep in the heart 

Tatters of summer start to fall 

Sparking thought’s thrall of joy and grief 

Where, written on each little leaf 

Are pieces of a madrigal 

The bud, the bloom, the swift descents 

Depicting life’s brief residence 

The wind woos woodland’s coloured crown 

Down, down the darling jewels spill 

Like children laughing, twirling till 

The hill is decked with gold-red-brown 

Each little leaf that bobs and floats 

Like goblins lobbing shawls and coats 

…and on a lake of afternoons 

That rolls across echo-washed shores 

We sense an urgent surge that pours 

Through flues to hour-shaped pontoons 

Soon beached upon Bygone’s sand-bars 

While we were trawling for sea-stars 

The jars that gleam from cellar-rooms 

Hold more than gathered garden-fare 

It seems prudent endeavors snare 

A winter-world of summer blooms 

Well worth the while of song-filled hours 

To taste the smile of long-felled flow’rs 

Around the clock four seasons spin 

While we walk the tight-rope of years 

And let our sentimental tears 

Sweeten the season we are in 

Because there is to every time 

A purpose to its rhythmed rhyme 

And thus, the poet, born to weep 

In ink, accrues the aftermath 

Of days that strew the garden path 

Into a memento to keep 

Long after we have lost the String 

That finds and winds its way to spring 

Then, even though we fondly mourn

The days and dreams that are no more

We fill heart-lockets with a score

Of mementos mutely reborn

To pause, soft as a butterfly

Upon the flower of a sigh

© Janet Martin