Oh, Heaven-ness of Sweet July

 Every year the same thing...

July feels like a beloved family member come home

after a long stay away...

Oh, em'rald hill from blue heights hung

Plethora of wildflowers flung

Across your sanguine, wild-grass sweep

A free-for-all for none to keep

Oh river, rambling jewelry

Like rhinestones sparkling to the sea

Where we are lured like fish it seems

Toward the dangling bait of streams/dreams

Oh, garden, in the cool of day

We love to come to you to pray

And sense a glimpse of Eden where

God's Presence walks upon the air

Oh, heaven-ness of sweet July

Cerulean apple of Time’s eye

Where green to gold the wheat fields run

Beneath a bold and blazing sun

Oh summer, like a jar that spills

Its salty stars to dusty sills

Where soft dusk’s dewy ebbs and flows

Clings to our skin like echo-snows

Oh, hollyhock, delphinium 

Oh, clock of petal-pendulum 

How faithfully you flare and fade

An orchestra of pieces played

Oh, heaven-ness of sweet July

A laughing twinkle in time's eye 

A flicker of sun-shadow art

That hangs forever in my heart

© Janet Martin

off to dead-head peonies and hoe onions

in the sweatiness, oops, heaven-ness of July 😎😍😊

Sweet seven-day forecast!!

(nope, we are not going to complain about the heat after May snowstorms!)

 Keep cool, comrades.

Ere Summer Like a Flower Fades...

Farewell, sweet July!

Ere winter drapes sugary shawls over the stooped shoulders of earth

And Jack Frost leaves his feather-scrawls on parchment void of flower-mirth

Where Queen Ann’s Lace and chicory and columbine and goldenrod

Have tendered their rainbow melee to rest in cold, dark chests of sod

Ere fence-line finery is doffed and orange lily-lanterns snuffed

By winds once green and whisper-soft as silk that pops the milkweed tuft

Ere songbirds launch a southward flight and woodlands shed their shushing tress

And all the land is staunch and white; shrouded in sterling quietness

Ere lap and slap of lake-song stills and surging splurge of surf is spent

And steely surface seals the rills; ere petal from pinion is rent

To moulder in the dust of days beneath a soldered garden path

Ere summer slips into the haze of wind-strummed wild-grass aftermath

Ere summer like a flower fades and Beauty dons more somber hues

Ere farmer wields the harvest-blades and winter-weather fills the news

Let’s love this season’s wonder-storm without wishing for something more

Ere What We Hold loses its form like waves as they are washed ashore

© Janet Martin

Though It Is Still July...

Not all of our family could be at the cottage this year 

and all of them needed to get back to work mid-week. 

Silence seemed exaggerated as the last steps thump-thumped 

up the stairs and away!

The sky seems near to tears

Moved by the word ‘good-bye’

And suddenly October nears

Though it is still July

A blur of Beauty hints

At summer passing by

October’s premonition tints

The green glints of July

I feel the heel of thrills

Leave imprints in each sigh

I reel; October’s aura chills

The foothills of July

Cricket cantata starts

And I cannot deny

October tugs at summer- hearts

Though it is still July

…where fullness of a day

Can drain a season dry

October hides in fields of hay

Though it is still July

© Janet Martin

It's Summertime

We are past July's half-way mark...doesn't that make your summer-heart lurch a little?!!

It’s summertime; 'neath lilt of vine we leap from day to day

Like steppingstones laid through a sparkling, swirling waterway

And try to find in daily grind a little of the joy

We knew in days long left behind, of carefree girl and boy

So we ease up the reins and chains that bind us to the plow

Say, whoa, Nellie, slow down Nellie, easy, easy now

For somehow time takes to full gallop over misty morn

Where wheat fields toss their glossy manes until their flow is shorn

Where flowers hoist their choicest plume while we, with mouths agape

Are overcome with worship where bud-miracles take shape

And we long for the longer days we knew when we were young

For days that stretched into the blue through meadows heaven-hung

With nothing more to do than peer into each butter-cup

And tip the dew from chalices where midnight-fairies sup

And kick the dust into a storm of wanderlust at large

And climb like lusty sailors onto a green-garden barge

To sail beneath the willow-tree that sighed with sheer content

Whilst shadowing the grassy sea with lacy filament

Where now the wings we spread are feathered with matters of fact

So much to weigh us down if we have no plan of attack

To help us make the merry most of days, now half-the-length

(a faith-plan of attack offers a sure tower of strength)

And in the middle of the muddle we learn how to pause

How to find beauty in a world so full of glaring flaws

How to savour fond flavours, clover-petal’s sugar-tips

Re-tasting childhood’s summer in our hearts and on our lips

And how to hold a moment like a fragile butterfly

Because we’ve learned how swift and suave summer can flutter by

And so we stop to listen to the toll of flower-bells

And fold our weathered wings to listen to the soulful knell

Of twilight tumbling through pink palisades propped on the west

To gather up another summer day into Past’s nest

And tug at tender chords tied to the rhythm and the rhyme

Of ebb and flow and high and low of dear, old summer-time

© Janet Martin

July-High

Silver breeze cobbles blue seas to the dock

Bumblebee bobbles in pink hollyhock

As the spark flies, July follows its clime

Heaven-lent glimpses to season-bent Time

Shimmer of shadow on glimmer of wheat

Summer-sweet tempo tapped out in bare feet

Wildflower wanders wherever it will

Dreamer drinks wonder while standing stalk-still

Wanderlust dangles from towering trees

Duty’s Must tangles with flowering pleas

Moments unravel like petal-primed stave

Beneath the gavel of cradle-to-grave

Look, July’s garden, a free-for-all show

Look, how the hill glistens with summer-snow

Look, mallow, yarrow, mullein and milkweed

Where swallow, sparrow and finch sowed its seed

Creek slithers, sleek like a snake through the reeds

Week withers, swift like a gift full of needs

Clock is a pocket full of heart-shaped holes

Heart is a locket full of star-draped shoals

Tug-of-Tide hobbles the soul to the sea

March of Time cobbles streets with memory

Tall grasses tickle twilight’s crimson bars

As July passes in a splash of stars

© Janet Martin