Comforted With Leaves

The dirt road winds its luring form

...through summers in our sighs

The dirt road winds its luring form through summers in our sighs 

Where autumn rain has calmed its storm of dust and butterflies 

The hazy, lazy melodies that ruffled leafy arc 

Surrenders summer’s symphonies like teardrops in the dark 

As purple aster stars are snuffed like sparks that climb the air 

And harvest is hope’s homage plucked and shucked with grateful prayer 

The lark has fled to kinder climes; the lily of the field 

No longer tolls with fragrant chimes to souls learning to yield 

To time’s insistent metronome of tick by tock tirade 

Where winds rip like a steel-tooth comb through woodland’s serenade 

And milkweed pods like plump professors dressed in proper best 

Are primed for the potation that will pop their velvet vests

 

...to empty out its lining in silk parachutes, seed-sized 

To waft above the shining countryside, frost-fossilized 

And we are not so sorry now to see the summer fade 

Seduced by nature’s know-how in October’s yellow glade 

Where autumn’s climax is a-flutter with color’s collage 

Before it gilds gardens and gutters in leaf-decoupage

 

And so, we let our summer hearts be comforted with leaves 

And hills bedecked with stellar art no earth-artist achieves 

And so, we let October-awe heal wounds left by a blade 

Wielded by the orthodox law of tick-tock promenade 

That marches through our inmost parts, where if one loves one grieves

And so we let our summer hearts be comforted with leaves

© Janet Martin 

...the purple aster-stars are snuffed