October or, Let's Learn to Eat Our Apples Slower

Happy October!

Once more we reacquaint ourselves with firesides and shawls 

The study of leaves grieves and thrills as summer’s awning falls 

To decorate the path that lures us like a laughing child 

Through that which no amount of hope secures, though it runs wild 

While walnut trees shed yellow tears like dizzy butterflies 

And we smother or sweeten fears with fresh-baked pumpkin pies 

Once more we savour memories and feel as rich as kings 

To think that God’s tender mercies should grant such lovely things 

Where summer is a dancer in time’s fleet-footed quadrille 

Where autumn always answers with an apple-dappled chill 

Where home is like a cozy quilt with love in every stitch 

Where leaf-acrobats twirl and lilt and blue-toned winds bewitch 

Once more the farmer gathers in the final harvest-fling 

Where by God’s grace the seed untethers miracles within 

The older that we get the more we marvel at it all 

That something oh, so great instills something so very small 

And how we, like a little seed are imbued with far more 

Than mortal could accomplish without God’s Divine Rapport 

Once more we find fine reasons to be filled with happiness 

For every single season binds sheaves fit for thankfulness 

We lift to our lips a mug of steaming sustenance 

(How many blessings can we count in just that one sentence) 

To praise the One who tucks October’s stunning sweeps between 

September’s summer afterglow and November’s mute scene 

Once more books become soul-mates where each twilight we set sail 

Like pillow-buoyed pirates to where e’er a page may hail 

Across the street, around the world, we are both young and old 

Abreast the tides that swirled and twirled green into red and gold 

Where time is always on the move, a phantom carousel 

Let’s learn to linger longer, love, before That Last Farewell 

Let’s learn to eat our apples slower; relish every bite 

For soon the dark will shower us with kisses starry-white 

Let’s not be so intent upon the hunger for the thrill 

Lest October is lent and gone before we had our fill 

Let’s simply savour the full flavour of Moment in Hand 

Before once more Time shuts the door to Bygone’s Neverland 

© Janet Martin 

Let's learn to eat our apples slower...