November Dusk Ditty

Tomorrow’s troubles can wait

(I’ve learned they always do)

Let’s linger at time’s phantom gate

While dusk deepens its blue

And snuffs away the view

Until all we can see

Is someone in the window staring

Back at you and me

Leave morrow’s sorrows be

Today has quite enough

To wrangle into poetry

Of hope and hurt and love

Of blush and bronze and mauve

Like colors on a tray

That fell beneath the velvet veil that

Brushed the world away

© Janet Martin

Adapting to November (both literally and metaphorically;)

 

Nov. .PAD Challenge Day 7. For today's prompt, write an adaptation poem.

I've been drinking in the beauty of leaf song lately!

A weekend of wild winds has winnowed its remnant woo💝

Once more the dirge from leafless limbs through barren belfies peals

Summer and autumn’s harvest hymns of fruit and flower shucked

The gardener admires nature’s ardor as it seals

Its promise with a kiss of seeds ‘neath umber furrows tucked

The blush that once bore roses wears the hasting death of day

Desire turns the other cheek and bears dusk’s dogged woo

For nothing in the world can keep time's westward tug at bay

Darling, to keep believing is the best that we can do

Denial is a futile antidote to steadfast truth

Once more the dirge of leafless hymns ignites a ballad, blue

As cornflowers pressed into sky, or eyes of wizened youth

For all that yet remains to try the sighs of me and you

Once more we brave the welkin trace of fingers without form

And will smiles to our faces while the dirge of autumn plays

A breath stealing ensemble that soon takes the world by storm

As stars and diamonds tremble on the prow of winter days

...that cannot faze the hand of He from whom all mercies flow

That cannot thwart the Deity from whence each season brims

That cannot vex the Giver or His grace whereby we go

Aha, Time's timbers quiver with hope's joy in leafless hymns

© Janet Martin

November Ballad

A few frames of the first four days of November...

I penned the first stanza on Monday, a blustery, rainy harbinger

to a gorgeous, sunny week that somehow 

*pulled its carpet out from under me before 

I had a chance to return to assemble the lines playing a ballad in my heart!

Instead of its original intent of October farewell

it turned into a November welcome!

below, a few 'carpet-tatters'😅

Leaf-decoupage decks rain-washed walks and lanes

Yard is a bed with crinkled counterpanes

Hearth is aflicker with fizzles and sputs 

Blue jay-bullies bicker, squirrel gathers nuts

And on yonder slope where corn tassels tossed

Umber furrows glisten with tinsel of frost

Garden-plots slumber until it is spring

Last squash and pumpkins are all gathered in

Shiny red chestnuts shed prickly, brown coats

River is dappled with fleets of leaf boats

Woodland is winnowed of whisper and sigh

Leaf awnings lower to let in the sky

Day breaks through molds of gold and amethyst

Landscapes are lavished with murmurs of mist

Wind choreographs lone-leaf pirouettes

Dusk, a brusque backdrop for stark silhouettes

Etched on a skyline of shiver and brr

Earth, like a deserted amphitheater

…After the crowds saw what they came to see

Quietness thunders with chick-a-dee-dee

After the rustling and rushing of feet

Silence amplifies echoes, bittersweet

As if a season of laughter and play

Was raked into heaps and trundled away

...while new generations learn toil's ethics 

Simple as helping to load leaves and sticks

Feeling the fervor of favor's delight

Of honest labor's hearty appetite 

Earning the happiness of high fives won (or in this case, jelly beans)

Tasting the sweetness of a job well done

November nips at hearts, noses and ears

While we come to grips with the blip of years

Tuning a tug of war, hold-and-release

Painting a minimalist’s masterpiece

After a palette of color, windblown

November showcases russet and brown

© Janet Martin

my childcare-tots inspired this stanza.... they were SO happy to help!

...while new generations learn toil's ethics 

Simple as helping to load leaves and sticks

Feeling the fervor of favor's delight

Of honest labor's hearty appetite 

Earning the happiness of high fives won

Tasting the sweetness of a job well done

I lamented to Little Lad about how

we were raking up one of my very favorite sounds in the world...

the rustle of leaves under feet!

So, he accommodated my suggestion of 'saving the sound'💖

Symphony That Was...

 

Leaf-lamps clung to woodland wicks for dear life this year!

We didn't get a killer frost to hasten their departure!

But now suddenly earth feels like a hall emptied of crowds

after the show...

Dusk casts brief shadows on a strobe of golden stillness

before drawing the shades as darkness swaddles supper-hour

Victoria and I were drawn outdoors

 as November Dusk outdid itself

in symphonic splendor

Now that the limb is stripped of leaf

The woods and countryside

Seem stilled beneath a silver sheath

Of silence amplified

Now that leaf-lilt has been subdued

The landscape dons an air

Of reverence and solitude

Akin to solemn prayer

Now that the lamp of leaf is snuffed

Of luminescent glow

The halls of hills and field seem buffed

To showcase stars of snow 

Now that the leaves have fallen down

The hush after applause

Swaddles the countryside and town

With Symphony That Was

© Janet Martin

November Blues...

Aha! I said this morning.

So THAT'S what was in yester-dusk's transfixing hues of blue!

November blues offset the hues of nature’s sparser clime

To wake within the heart a grin akin to joy bell’s chime

To draw our eyes beyond the rise and fall of season-surf

And feel the toll of transience roll across surrendered turf

I think the poet’s ink is siphoned from November blues

A welkin well where whispers swell and syllable subdues

A brooding deep above a sweep of sentenced green-gold-gray

A sacred sense of an immense changeover under way

November blues thunder with dues we cannot keep at bay

Where woodland throbs with muffled sobs of leaf-song snuffed away

Barren limbs stark against the early dark of Autumn dusk

As nature sets its silhouettes on backdrops, blue and brusque

November blues; who can refuse the sentimental *rush

Of lowered skies authoring sighs of awe beneath a brush

That drips with hues of smold'ring blues that steals our breath and gaze

As Artist spills a storm of thrills from fall's more muted trays 

 

November blues unfetter hues of frigid, downy-white

Where on the morn the heart is torn twixt dismay and delight

A strange tableau, transformed by snow, yester-ago far-swept

Where blue unfurled a wonderworld of winter while we slept

© Janet Martin

* yes, I mean rush (not crush)

unlike Grandsonny yesterday morning

announcing to his mom that

'I got a big rush on Millie'

 (name changed for privacy sake)😂

His mother assumes someone must have

used the word 'crush'😄😘

Sigh...'I suppose it's not so-o bad' acquiesced Victoria

(a fellow-November blues lover)

gazing out to the serene snow-globe scene

This is My Father's World

Autumn...(or Awe-sum)

This year it seems like everyone is eager to deck the halls with boughs of holly very early!!

Personally, I prefer to revel in the tail-winds of Autumn for just a little longer...😊

Does it not stir within the heart a rush of rare delight

And rouse, with frameless works of art a nameless appetite

Does it not kindle thoughts of quilt-retreats and cups of tea

Where every leaf is like a little lilt of poetry

Where woodland wicks intensify, where wind-wild coursers dash

Until full-colour flickers lie in heaps of russet ash

Does it not bid our feet to slow, to linger by the fence

To revel in the afterglow of amber ambience

Does it not tug soul-strings to breaking points with Farewell’s Show?

Is it not like a hug that always brings the letting go?

Embodiment of Bittersweet, ah, does it not so seem

Where enchantment and want compete where life is but a dream

Ah, tell me are there any two syllables that can impress

Upon us such a surge of blue and brooding happiness

Ah, tell me in this four-season affair of yearly sum

Is there another word that can compare to thee, Autumn

© Janet Martin

November Bliss

PAD Challenge day 10: For today's prompt, write a nature poem.

To linger in the golden rains of autumn’s falling leaves

To steep in farewell’s fond refrains awash with memories

To wrestle with the afterglow of Glints of Paradise

As November puts on a show that takes us by surprise

To look a little longer where the grove is turning gray

To satisfy soul-hunger from nature’s dwindling buffet

To read between fence and skyline, the kind of poetry

That needs no words to dignify the Author’s mastery

To wear with kinder fervor time’s small dust-stitches of skin

And magnify the Server of each breath that we draw in

To tread upon the rustling hush of woodland’s winnowed song

With something like a lover’s blush beneath Autumn’s ‘so-long’

© Janet Martin

I'd say it like Samuel Taylor Coleridge if I could...

It's November

 

It's like listening to an orchestra...

'When the heavens hoist a masterpiece above earth’s muted bars'

When the dust of summer settles and the nettle sheds its sheen

When the countryside is like a patchwork quilt of tan and green

When once more we dumbly marvel at the haste of what has been

It’s November

When the wind sweeps through the hollow tucking into nook and crook

Whispers winnowed from the bower to the fence-line and the brook

When the heart is torn twixt wonder and the want for worlds forsook

It’s November

When the fruit of fervent labor gleams from rainbow-colored jars

When the heavens hoist a masterpiece above earth’s muted bars

When we feel like a trespasser on artwork of leaves and stars

It's November

When we gape anew at scenes that seasons utterly transform

When the miracle of wonderment rouses a worship-storm

When our thoughts are overtaken by phrases ink cannot charm

It’s November

When the warmth of woodstove fires hearkens back to good old days

When it sparks a sentimental sort of sonnet in its blaze

When we sense a wafting threshold to Winter, before its ways

It’s November

© Janet Martin

Front row seat...for free!

Could we ask for anything more?!

over and over this beautiful reminder...

Lam.3:22-23

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,

for his compassions never fail.

23They are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness.