So Long, September

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...

Tonight's dessert awaiting a mound of freshly-whipped cream,

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