This is always a sentimental day of the year...So long, September!
Swept away in a flurry of preparation and preserving!
September- the thick of
Earth's heaven
of harvest!
So long, September’s misty morn...
Like a postlude, to tune the dark
With ballads slipping like a tear
No lips can kiss away...
before heading to Jim's mom and sister, who are cooking the rest of supper!
So long, sweet sweep of summer spent
Of green-leaf secrets whispered ere
The air grew heavy with the scent
Of farewell’s pungent atmosphere
Ere daylight’s dusky hours fell
Faster beneath gavels deep blue
Where younger hunger tolled a bell
Of inevitable adieu
So long, September’s misty morn
Futile to stoke Past’s embers, oh
Or don a countenance forlorn
Where seasons always come and go
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to greet, a time to part
A time to laugh, a time to weep
And gather harvests for the heart
…fragments of color, peach and plum
Of hummingbird and butterfly
A petal-and-echo-spectrum
From summer full of days gone by
Of dahlia-pom-poms, vermillion
Of fields trembling with cricket lays
Of harvest moon medallion
Dangling above our raptured gaze
Where compositions of so-long
Rouse rhapsodies no pen can spell
Like the teal essence of sea-song
Rolling within, swell after swell
Like a postlude, to tune the dark
With ballads slipping like a tear
No lips can kiss away. Ah, hark!
Is that a falling leaf I hear?
So long, well-trampled garden path
By expeditions to and fro
To heap baskets with aftermath
That always awes and thrills us so
With toil and mercy’s dividends
Praise God from whom all blessing flows
For every break of day that wends
To so-long’s certain curtain-close
So long, purple wild aster art
And amber ambience that gleams
Like fresh-pressed cider, sweet and tart
To tease eager taste-buds with dreams
That, in spite of what time may take
It kindly, generously grants
Un-stoppered wonderment to wake
A time to sing, a time to dance
So long, so long, September-love
Of fading flower-serenade
Of clinging to a thinning glove
We wear on earth, but heaven-made
Of places we never quite found
And some we did, and never sought
So long, so long, September, crowned
With apple-red and golden rod
© Janet Martin
