Ah, Summer

 Ah, hands laden with garden-fare...

ah, sand between our toes...

Ah, silver-sequined taper melting moments dearly prized

You strew to past’s cast paper joy and sorrow synchronized

Scents of your passage mingle in incense of dust and dew

As our senses tingle with the awareness of you

Ah, eager expectation meshed with echo-aftermath

Shards of dashed celebration deck impressions of a path

That wends and winds its way from where we were to where we are

Fresh from a world of yesterdays we leap from star to star

Ah, land of lengthened daylight before night draws down its bars

And scatters flowers, silver-white in bowers bent with stars

Ah, grand cathedral brimming with winter’s bloom-dreams come true

While sight is barely skimming the fringe of what God can do

Ah, hands laden with garden-fare, ah, sand between our toes

Arbors flowing with silken, sunny honeysuckle prose

Ah, hill and hollow frilled with skeins and skeins of Queen Ann’s lace

Ah, lily-tallow spilled and willed to life’s last resting place

Ah, petal-tear ellipses, bit o’ salt, a bit o’ sweet

Where auburn soon eclipses gold and green of corn and wheat

Where late-day diamonds dancing on a bit o’ lake-lent hue

Crown points of exclamation with love’s stinging residue

Ah summer; soulful salutation of blooms and bare feet

Of heat-waves rolling over shores where earth and heaven meet

Of longing's gaping canyon overflowing with your hymn

Ah summer, full of reasons to be glad and sing and sing

© Janet Martin

Where late-day diamonds dancing on a bit o’ lake-lent hue

Crown points of exclamation with love’s stinging residue...