Five Senses Smorgasbord or Autumn Accolades

These days earth's Smorgasbord groans with Autumn's abundancy

appealing to all the senses but especially taste and see...

Season where halos overhead...

float leaf by leaf...

to lawn and street...

And so, we muster up excuses fine reason to put indoor chores on pause...

Because we know how soon this season drifts away like milkweed gauze...

Season where halos overhead float leaf by leaf to lawn and street

Where hazy, lazy days turn red and gold and crisp and apple-sweet

Where woodland beauty turns our heads and steals the autumn-lover’s heart

Where nature’s loom weaves lustrous threads that only God’s touch can impart

Season of flower-frond farewells as petal bells, frost-kissed, are stilled

Of fields where harvest homage swells as bins and barns and jars are filled

Of oh, so silent aftermath as hymn of limb and field are doffed

Of foot-fall vacant garden path, save for the frames where echoes waft

Season of epicurean thrills, seasoned with cinnamon and cloves

Where nature is a fount that spills to nutmeg-ginger-tinted groves

That dwindles fall’s pigment from heights like a slow-ebbing color-sea

And rekindles our appetites for books and cozy nooks and tea

Season of comfy sweaters tugged from shelves and boxes long forgot

Where we feel warm and wooly hugged and dance a jig right on the spot

Where thanksgiving is not about the meal of turkey, dressing, pie

But daily living out life’s zeal of gratefulness in rife reply

Season of lingering outdoors because we sense the numbered days

Before the chill of winter roars through corridors where sumacs blaze

And so, we muster up excuses fine reason to put indoor chores on pause

Because we know how soon this season drifts away like milkweed gauze

Season of acorn, butternut squash, pumpkin popularity

Of hearty chowders, succotash, of simmer-steep-knead gaiety

While the wind whinnies like a horse tossing the tress of tree and reed

While nature takes its steady course of bud to bloom to scattered seed

Season where longing mingles with gentle contentment, bittersweet

Where tingle of excitement and lament for what is spent compete

Season of simple wishes like savouring autumn’s melody

And delighting in the delicious smorgasbord of Taste and See

© Janet Martin

And rekindles our appetites for books and cozy nooks...

... and tea

Welcome October

 

Welcome October

Flower-fleet

Autumn lover’s

Joy complete

Shadow of

Where summer was

Kindles earth’s

Candelabras

Welcome October

Bliss unfurled

In an Autumn

Wonder-world

Amber, merlot

Scarlet, brown

Tint the glints

In nature’s crown

Welcome October

Pumpkin Pies

Apple Orchard

Paradise

Woodlands flare

While we applaud

Everybody

Worships God

Welcome October

Harvest hymn

Cellars, silos

And hearts brim

With a melody

Of praise

For red, gold

October days

© Janet Martin

October-set

Jim, my most faithful compliment-or and critic

said this morning, 'bless their hearts, whoever they are

(who bother  take the time to read another autumn poem by Janet

And have any idea what she's saying)'

And I say Amen. 😀

(I usually try to finish writing before he is home but I got lost

outside too long this morning...

He said if he wrote an autumn poem it would say

In Fall 

We Rake 

Leaves. 

I told him most people would prefer his style to mine. 😂

He is for the most part very patient when it comes to my rhyme-fetish.

This morning's frost did it;

Earth is embossed in golden snow!

 

Earth’s halls are decked with Autumn-set 

Beneath our feet is splayed 

The fading strains of what remains 

Of foliage-promenade 

Ballrooms of air are gleaming where 

Leaf-ballerinas twirl 

And lure us in to laugh and spin 

With life’s Forever Girl 

Impressions of fond days we love 

Are transformed, leaf-by-leaf 

The Dancer shucked and gently tucked 

Into the Planter’s Sheaf 

The Best and Worst of Blessed and Cursed 

Are lavished with fine art 

Where time performs its season-storms 

Until death do us part 

Now dawn is tossed in yawns of frost 

The Silence, silver-kissed 

As green becomes the brittle sums 

Of Autumn’s amethyst 

Where gardens glow with golden snow 

Midst heart-throbbed hugs and sighs 

Because we sense the transience 

Of autumn’s paradise 

Weightless and soft medallions waft 

As nature’s tresses fall 

Into a wreath settled beneath 

The Framework of it all 

© Janet Martin 

Garden Siesta Song

 

After the garden is plowed...

...it always seems to beg a farewell-ballad

Like a pungent, umber blanket tucked in all along each edge

Autumn’s garden, slumber-readied tugs at Twilight’s loose heart-threads 

Sky-high noon of laughing summer has its sun-spun luster lost 

Now October yields to kisses brusque with dusk and leaf embossed 

Soon a crop of stars will sparkle on the midnight of the sod 

And the plot that popped with colour will be covered up by God 

Granting to the soil sweet respite while fruit-flower founts are sealed 

Interceding for the good of both the grower and the field 

Longing and relief entangle in the furrows, doffed and brown 

Where the silk of echo-spangles wafts aloft like thistledown 

As the murmur of spent summer like a brook, not frozen yet 

With a tempo of mementos plays a tender minuet 

Sleep, dear garden do not worry what the morrow holds for thee 

God has said as long as earth is, seed and harvest-time will be 

Snuggle up and take thy rest now, beneath downy sheets of snow 

While you earned winter’s siesta, I was learning to let go 

© Janet Martin 

Minuet in G

Skimming the surface of Echo-spangles...

The bright side of a poor potato patch...lots of play-space!

Deep-into-October Tableau or October on a Blue-gray Afternoon

 

Written in honour of this brooding, blue-gray deep-into-October afternoon

The garden has yielded its final gem 

The tree relinquishes its diadem 

The field is shorn where corn and barley gleamed 

Like gold and silver lakes as sunshine streamed 

Through a flue, gold and blue to mist-kissed piers 

The lily-dappled mead has shed its tears 

And summer like a picnic counterpane 

Is shaken out and folded up again 

The flower wonderland I dearly prized 

Where I would linger, petal-mesmerized 

Is stark and still, its thrill of grandeur spent 

Reminding me that all we have is lent 

The decanter of warmer days is drained 

The cricket melody gradually waned 

Until even the scattered cadence thinned 

And all I hear now is the brooding wind 

The chubby junco bobs among the leaves 

Quite unaware that these are autumn’s sheaves 

I wander without reason through bloom's wake 

How can such sweetness rouse such a raw ache 

Where fallow turns to furrow ‘neath the plow 

Where all we ever have is here and now 

Where we are torn between sorrow and awe 

Where earth seems so at peace with Nature’s Law 

October on a blue-gray afternoon 

Is like a bit of heaven gone too soon 

Each tree crowned in a halo, russet-bronze 

That drips and slips until the big sky yawns 

Through branches stark-naked and bold 

Etched in gnarled splendor for all to behold 

And a rush, sort of like a sudden sea 

Surges through us in spellbound sympathy 

I take my tea outside to watch the show 

The slow unraveling of red-yellow 

While dusk drops deep blue tints above yon hill 

A hint of woodsmoke wafts upon the chill 

And I am fully glad and sad at once 

Where October is a flickering sconce 

Set like a centerpiece on a buffet 

Of colour turning burnished brown and gray 

© Janet Martin 

Comforted With Leaves

The dirt road winds its luring form

...through summers in our sighs

The dirt road winds its luring form through summers in our sighs 

Where autumn rain has calmed its storm of dust and butterflies 

The hazy, lazy melodies that ruffled leafy arc 

Surrenders summer’s symphonies like teardrops in the dark 

As purple aster stars are snuffed like sparks that climb the air 

And harvest is hope’s homage plucked and shucked with grateful prayer 

The lark has fled to kinder climes; the lily of the field 

No longer tolls with fragrant chimes to souls learning to yield 

To time’s insistent metronome of tick by tock tirade 

Where winds rip like a steel-tooth comb through woodland’s serenade 

And milkweed pods like plump professors dressed in proper best 

Are primed for the potation that will pop their velvet vests

 

...to empty out its lining in silk parachutes, seed-sized 

To waft above the shining countryside, frost-fossilized 

And we are not so sorry now to see the summer fade 

Seduced by nature’s know-how in October’s yellow glade 

Where autumn’s climax is a-flutter with color’s collage 

Before it gilds gardens and gutters in leaf-decoupage

 

And so, we let our summer hearts be comforted with leaves 

And hills bedecked with stellar art no earth-artist achieves 

And so, we let October-awe heal wounds left by a blade 

Wielded by the orthodox law of tick-tock promenade 

That marches through our inmost parts, where if one loves one grieves

And so we let our summer hearts be comforted with leaves

© Janet Martin 

...the purple aster-stars are snuffed

October or, Let's Learn to Eat Our Apples Slower

Happy October!

Once more we reacquaint ourselves with firesides and shawls 

The study of leaves grieves and thrills as summer’s awning falls 

To decorate the path that lures us like a laughing child 

Through that which no amount of hope secures, though it runs wild 

While walnut trees shed yellow tears like dizzy butterflies 

And we smother or sweeten fears with fresh-baked pumpkin pies 

Once more we savour memories and feel as rich as kings 

To think that God’s tender mercies should grant such lovely things 

Where summer is a dancer in time’s fleet-footed quadrille 

Where autumn always answers with an apple-dappled chill 

Where home is like a cozy quilt with love in every stitch 

Where leaf-acrobats twirl and lilt and blue-toned winds bewitch 

Once more the farmer gathers in the final harvest-fling 

Where by God’s grace the seed untethers miracles within 

The older that we get the more we marvel at it all 

That something oh, so great instills something so very small 

And how we, like a little seed are imbued with far more 

Than mortal could accomplish without God’s Divine Rapport 

Once more we find fine reasons to be filled with happiness 

For every single season binds sheaves fit for thankfulness 

We lift to our lips a mug of steaming sustenance 

(How many blessings can we count in just that one sentence) 

To praise the One who tucks October’s stunning sweeps between 

September’s summer afterglow and November’s mute scene 

Once more books become soul-mates where each twilight we set sail 

Like pillow-buoyed pirates to where e’er a page may hail 

Across the street, around the world, we are both young and old 

Abreast the tides that swirled and twirled green into red and gold 

Where time is always on the move, a phantom carousel 

Let’s learn to linger longer, love, before That Last Farewell 

Let’s learn to eat our apples slower; relish every bite 

For soon the dark will shower us with kisses starry-white 

Let’s not be so intent upon the hunger for the thrill 

Lest October is lent and gone before we had our fill 

Let’s simply savour the full flavour of Moment in Hand 

Before once more Time shuts the door to Bygone’s Neverland 

© Janet Martin 

Let's learn to eat our apples slower...