Snatches of September Song...

Happy over halfway-through-September and

the first day of the last week of summer

so, slow down and enjoy!! 

Ps.89:11

The heavens are Yours, the earth also is Yours;
The world and all its fullness, 

You have founded them

The flowers, as if sensing summer’s impending demise

With orchestral-like vim, reach for crescendos, no holds barred...

As asters, at long last release glimpses of paradise

In Masterpieces tossed across landscapes, white-purple-starred...

The flowers, as if sensing summer’s impending demise

With orchestral-like vim, reach for crescendos, no holds barred

As asters, at long last release glimpses of paradise

In Masterpieces tossed across landscapes, white-purple-starred

And orchard throughfares bustle with brief activity

As ballads of ‘kerplunk’ kindle an ageless, pure delight

As crickets serenade all of beloved humanity

For everyone is precious in their Choir-conductor’s sight

Thus, we are all beholden to join in as best we can

To worship The Creator of the heavens and the earth

To echo dear old David as He marveled ‘what is man?

That He is mindful of us, and grants tasks of sacred worth

Goldenrod-tapers gleam along freeways and boulevards

That wander from the beaten path through rural solitude

The silver-poplar shimmers, tugging at heartstrings of bards

Evoking poetry, plumbed from scents of summer subdued

From misty morning meanders, from musky, dusky strolls

From fields farmers denude; from gardens, spilling final spoil

From an emerging aura of autumn, rolling through souls

Where once-upon-sweet-summer’s day we reveled in its toil

Atop the tides that tug beneath in Holy Ground of Now

To-everything-a-season and purpose under the sun

As September keens us more closely, to Time’s Scythe somehow

As trees, once green adapt a sheen of hues, not quite begun

Devotion/emotion chokes on wonder; ‘what is man’ that God should bless

Our neglect of worship, with Beauty’s unplumbed reserves

Meeting bold expectation with pear-plum-kissed happiness

With more to thrill awe’s senses than any of us deserves

While we are drawing nearer to a line we cannot see

For some of us September will draw one last door ajar

For some of us September will unveil eternity

Thus, we should all remember God, no matter who we are

Before Time’s silver cord is loosed and its golden bowl breaks

Before September’s embers dim and yield to He who grants

Each apple-dappled, dewdrop-dazzled frond; who gives and takes

Who founded every favour of Divine Extravagance

Corn-rows arrange a symphony of whispers, like a toast

To butterflies bobbing beneath heaven’s boundless blue swell

Harvest, hope’s culmination humbles calloused, mortal boast

As mercy, new each morning twirls September’s carousel

As nostrils fill with nuances of nature’s fine vermouth

As we consider God, and love’s divine extravagance

As we learn how to worship Him in spirit and in truth

As September unveils a smorgasbord of evidence

As we, agape, witness the One whose Sovereign order rules

Where through worlds clearly seen even a child can understand

As Innocence, immune to the pitiful plight of fools

Catches snatches of music from September’s beaming band

Janet Martin

Meeting bold expectation with pear-plum-kissed happiness...

As nostrils fill with nuances of nature’s fine vermouth...

...like a toast

To butterflies bobbing beneath heaven’s boundless blue swell

Harvest, hope’s culmination humbles calloused, mortal boast...

The Glad, Sad Glance/Dance of Season-Song

Hello September, 

month of Burnished Beauty

and Bittersweet Bliss! 

"The only things to truly get sad about" 

philosophized my husband this morning,

"are those things you deeply loved and lose forever!"

This in reply to my 'I'm kinda sad but not totally sad...

(because it's September and in a sense the end of summer

 as school starts again etc. in Canada), 

...because I'm glad every season has wonders I utterly love!"

That said, 

as the Harbinger to Autumn 

strews undeniable hints 

of summer's end,

a rush of glad-sad,

 bursts like a bittersweet ballad

as I steep my soul 

in the cheeping of crickets!

Season-song...

A rush of innocence and dreams

Where laughter in the glad of it

And lament, in the sad of it

Slips through the spring of life like streams

...that sparkle in summer sunshine

A glance of gold-glossed green and blue

Where children heedlessly splash through

The prime of life's care freest time

‘ere waltzes from yon Piper’s flute

Startles dancers with Beckoning

Of ballads, rife with reckoning

From subtle scales, imbued with fruit

Where none can faze autumnal rote

That rolls through green-leaf canopies

With molten, auburn melodies

Fading with every falling note

…to settle with the silenced throng

Beneath a blanket of snow stars

And muffled footfalls, brushed o'er bars

Bearing the dance/glance of Season-song

Begun in innocence, but soon

Tuned to a twirling Carousel

Unfurling hello and farewell

To trampled footpaths, petal-strewn  

Janet Martin

Eccles.3:1-2

To everything there is a season,

and a time for every purpose under heaven:

2a time to be born and a time to die,

a time to plant and a time to uproot, ...

September-Sentimentality

September always seems to steep my senses with an urgency to

stop more, to savor summer's final fling!,

even while I haste from garden to kitchen with

harvest to gather and preserve!

(rescuing tomatoes from rows ravaged with blight!!)

While collecting ingredients for savoury supper dishes...

I am so thankful for a poetry loving mother,

who first kindled and nurtured my love for poetry;

 for cadence of rhythm and rhyme ...

Seems sometimes I grow homesick for places I’ve never been

For waves that wash a far-off shore of seas I’ve never seen

For sun and shadow play on views that ache in thought’s ‘suppose’

Before they slip away in hues of amber, blue and rose

Seems sometimes I grow lonesome for someone I’ve never known

A kindred-spirit troubadour not made of skin and bone

But of a whisper that ignites a kind of poetry

That kindles roaring appetites for what will never be

Seems sometimes I grow wistful for worlds long-forgotten, oh

For misty sun-kissed vistas or river-rush far below

And I grow sentimental over lyrics still untamed

In melodies still wafting in masterpieces unnamed

Seems sometimes in September I am bitter-sweetly torn

Twixt Summer’s dying ember and beauty’s bliss, Autumn-born/borne

Seems sometimes in the twilight of another summer’s sweep

I sense a tender kinship with past poets, fast asleep

Seems sometimes all the orchards, gardens, crickets, butterflies

The blues, purples and golds that paint a poet’s paradise

Of white heath asters, gleam of goldenrod, of milkweed's blush

Anoints me with a sense of living 'neath an Artist’s brush

Seems sometimes I can almost hear an almost-symphony

A grand medley of solos and unrivaled harmony

As flower-bowers crescendo then fade, as woodlands flare

Seems sometimes I can almost feel nature’s baton, mid-air

© Janet Martin

One evening I commented to my mother how much I love the sound of crickets

and she wondered if I remember the poem about the cricket and the ant...

My organized mom knew where in her scads of clippings to (hopefully) find it!

And she did. a very timely reminder!

“A slack hand causes poverty,

 but the hand of the diligent makes rich.”

 (Proverbs 10:4)

“The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing,

 while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied.”

 (Proverbs 13:4)

September Song-part one

Eccles.3:11

He has made everything beautiful in its time.

 He has also set eternity in the human heart; 

yet no one can fathom what God has done

 from beginning to end.

Happy first September Saturday for this year!

I've had a very happy beginning...

Green lights all the way, BOTH WAYS through town on an early grocery-dash.

Feeling happy for the man piling groceries in the back seat of his pickup

between Child and Dog.

Stopping a few times on the way home,

first to admire an apple orchard with the appeal of propped ladders

then to delight in the pure abandon of two horses dashing round and round

their green pasture!

Where golden rod and wild asters collaborate to steal our breath...

Where beneath heaven's denim-deeps September’s soulful beauty splays

In orchards bent with apple red,...

 in pastures green where horses prance...

In the cool of the morning where the lawn glimmers with gilt of dew

And coffee-steam hangs on the air and front porch chair dons quilt or two...

And the corn field is like a wall of whispers, lush, before the frost...

Where golden rod and wild asters collaborate to steal our breath

Where summer’s day hastens its gait toward birth’s sure ordinance; death

Where mellow yellow stubble-sweeps host perpetual cricket lays

Where beneath heaven's denim-deeps September’s soulful beauty splays

In orchards bent with apple red, in pastures green where horses prance

In the wild-flower-filled creek-bed, in the garden’s extravagance

In the cool of the morning where the lawn glimmers with gilt of dew

And coffee-steam hangs on the air and front porch chair dons quilt or two

And the corn field is like a wall of whispers, lush, before the frost

Turns banter brittle; where the call of Autumn stirs a sense of loss

Where eventide, awash with amber ambience runs delight wild

In spite of loath relinquishments, of season-songs Bygone-beguiled

By skylines, dusky like a plum, purple-sweet with mist and dust-kiss

Where scarlet striate starts to strum the first few bars of Autumn Bliss

Like a drum roll through woodland tress, like an arpeggio of leaf

September’s simple happiness fills summer hearts with sweet relief

And assurance of morrows swelled like buds, primed and waiting to burst

With beauty never yet beheld; while September plays preludes first

© Janet Martin

Where scarlet striate starts to strum the first few bars of Autumn Bliss

Like a drum roll through woodland tress, like an arpeggio of leaf...

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