This Is November

Last Post and Rouse

"This is November; the month to remember 

All those who fought for ‘true North strong and free’ "

What a blessing to be able to

cherish life's loveliness-es in a country where we are free to do so!

Free (covid-restrictions aside) to come and go as we please!

This freedom comes at a great price!

Lest We Forget

This is the season of silver-silk haloes 

Crowning milkweed in gauzy silhouettes 

Landscapes a-glimmer with stubble and furrows 

Shadows soft-stenciled like penciled vignettes 

This is the season of silence. Leaf-laughter 

Snuffed like a flicker from each woodland wick 

Now our senses are drawn to a rafter 

Now blue, now gray, now Day cut to the quick 

This is the season of tender surrender 

Baring of secrets that full foliage kept 

Doffed of the flower but never the splendor 

Where leaf-confetti is scattered and swept 

This is the season of Nature’s stark beauty 

Before heavens unfurl winter’s oriflamme 

Flinging white featherdown o’er town and country 

Muffling the brittle ballad of Autumn

This is the season of brook song refurbished 

Gone to seed thistle-weed-parachute flight 

Caught on a current of sunbeams, dusk-burnished 

Glint of gold gossamer soon lost to sight 

This is the season of Collected Treasure

Bloom dappled meadow, an echo of Thought

Playing back pictures of picnic-lunch pleasure 

Crooning a postlude of  'forget-me-not'

This is November; the month to remember 

All those who fought for ‘true North strong and free’ 

This is November; the last glowing ember 

On a hearth kindled with Expectancy 

© Janet Martin

An Oldie to remind us there is 

No 'Free' in Freedom

Somber and steady up a tree-lined street

A stream of solemn soldier-ranks are led,

As sun-beams dance to the drummer’s beat

Filtering through the branches overhead

Beyond the tears and past the arc of trees

The music of a small child’s laughter swells

Stark contrast to the mourning infantry

Bowing beneath the tolling of the bells

Then, as the weeping bag-pipe song exalts

The melody of sweet Amazing Grace

Then, as the banner-covered coffin halts

For it has reached its final resting place

Then, as the last note fades the cannon flies

Its echo fills the air from shore to shore

Yet pales in the wake of a mother’s cries

“There is no ‘free’ in freedom anymore

Put down your banners, lay down your guns

My sweet baby boy has died

Tributes, salutes, many battles won

Won’t bring him back” she cried

“Take away all the roses for nothing will be

Like it ever was before

The price of freedom is too hard for me

There is no ‘free’ in freedom anymore”

Freedom (part two)

Upon Golgotha’s rocky skull-strewn trail

A teaming, screaming throng of hatred surged

Swarming around a form blood-bathed and pale

Upon a place called Calvary they converged

Wild, wild with rage wages hate’s vicious roar

No one remains to defend Love unbound

Stark contrast to the cheers and praise before

Where palm-tree branches waved and decked the ground

Then as the violent blows of steel on steel

Accentuates the horror on the hill

Then, as they drive in hatred nail by nail

Against Love’s cries of ‘Father, not My will’

Then, as they praised and raised Life’s blood-stained cross

In victory, death’s maddened thousands roar

As Mary, his mother weeps for her loss

“There is no ‘free’ in freedom anymore

Take away your hammers, lay down your swords

My dear precious son has died”

As the lightning flashed and the thunder roared

There at His feet she cried

“Take away all your hatred, your jeers and chanting

For you have slain my Lord

Take away all your weapons and cease your ranting

There is no ‘free’ in freedom anymore”

There is no ‘free’ in freedom, Love pays a price

Where hellish horrors run

There is no ‘free’ in freedom, its sacrifice

Save in Christ, is never done

There is no ‘free’ in freedom, red the river

That flows on its behalf

There is no 'free' in freedom; its signature

A blood-stained autograph

© Janet Martin