Dear September, (A Summer-lover's Entreaty)

Yesterday disappeared before I had a chance to

poem-welcome September💖

These days are a beautiful blur of pick and preserve,

of pausing to delight in the precious pleasure dwindling summer days...

Hold back the mellow, yellow haze seeping through sheen of summer green

And bar the gate where morrows wait to toss echoes from hill to hill

And keep at bay dusk’s blue and gray that draws today to what-has-been

Where farewells waft somewhere aloft but close enough to spark a chill

Delay the woo that will undo the lullaby in woodland tress

Abate the tide that turns the countryside to works of autumn art

And pause the haste that lays to waste summer-wild and chaste happiness

...and strive to slow the letting go that tugs at ties wound through the heart

Postpone the thrill of standing stock-still, stunned by sweeps of gold and rose

Oh, stay the hand that weighs the sand that falls through summer’s sanguine skies

Appease the want for flower-font and garden dirt between our toes

Extend the boon of sunny afternoon regaled with butterflies

Stoke summer’s dying ember, dear September, gild its darling dust

With prolonged trace of Queen Ann’s lace to grace commonplace avenues

Kiss the lament of summer spent with plums, and throes of harvest-lust

Ah, time enough to spill the Stuff that unfurls Autumn’s thund’ring hues

© Janet Martin

now, off to dig potatoes because I discovered they are starting to rot!!

due to all the rain.

Happy September Saturday to you!

And FINALLY, the kind of forecast we have been waiting for all summer!!

With Joy Still Intact

Singing the praises of September-Fall's Glory this morning!

Happy First Autumn Saturday of 2022!

Psalm 24:1

The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof; 

the world, and they that dwell therein.

From molds of bronze and blue and gold September’s daybreak spills

An aura from Another World steeps treetops, fields and hills

In deep green woodland diadems, stained-glass-like fragments gleam

In ditches scarlet hawkweed gems and purple aster stream 

From welkin wellsprings, wonder, like a drum roll, stirs the heart

As earth and heavens thunder with first autumn’s works of art

Delight dines on Sublime Arrangements, Beauty’s buffet stacked

In spite of summertime’s estrangements, with joy still intact

The sun is like a trumpet heralding Mercy’s embrace

The world wrapped in a blanket unfurled from the throne of grace

Where, no matter the season, we are part and parcel of

The very humbling reason of God’s everlasting love

How tender is the awe of mourning/morning where Past’s ashes strew

While splendor never stops adorning earth with Heaven’s woo

September’s paint brush hovers while fall’s thrilling Prelude plays

Where joy never recovers from Creation’s constant praise

© Janet Martin

September Bliss

 

Bliss, sweet bliss

A book and tea

With crickets and zinnias for company...

Bliss, sweet bliss

Nigh fair as June;

September Sunday afternoon

Bliss, sweet bliss

Time cannot touch

Life's simplest pleasures we love so much

Bliss, oh sweetest

Bliss of all

Summer's chair perched on the brink of fall

~Janet Martin~

above page from the book The Shape of a Year by Jean Hersey

September Stage...

Aren't you glad fall is not a bully, but eases summer hearts toward the door of season-change

with such a pleasant demeanor we cannot be too sad...

Fall flutters in on zinnia-wings...

...on sedum's demure blush

Beneath a sweep of cumulus and nimbostratus skies

Soybean fields glitter with impressions of bronzed butterflies

Fall shimmers in on misty morning glory mantled stairs...

Fall flutters in on zinnia-wings and sedum’s demure blush

On cinnamon and cardamom and ginger-burnished bush

Beneath a sweep of cumulus and nimbostratus skies

Soybean fields glitter with impressions of bronzed butterflies

Fall moseys in while we get cozy in sweaters and socks

While harvest spills and toil refills jars, bins, barrels and crocks

While amber ambience begins to steep the atmosphere

With the sweet-bitter sense of summer’s farewell drawing near

Fall eases in where trees begin to tell the tender truth

How even earth cannot preserve verve of eternal youth

But yields its hills and fields to the law and order of God

Who orchestrates the floodgates of bud and seed, sky and sod

Fall shimmers in on misty morning glory mantled stairs

It gleams in streams of golden rod, in purple aster-flares

It loiters in the orchard where the apple tree is bent

With proof of summer’s fond, fruit-laden, fading testament

Fall tints the countryside with hints of ‘what must be will be’

Before the End of Summer is declared officially

Like the turn of the tide fall starts to flow across a shore

With ripple over ripple until summer is no more

Fall sparkles in September's winnowing of summer's ties

September, like a harbinger with kind and laughing eyes

Is gently drawing autumn's door ajar before the rose

Has strewn its petals on the floor of summer's curtain-close 

© Janet Martin

Happy Sweet, September Saturday!

Agile Acrobat

Today begins a new school year in Canada, 

and though the calendar says its still summer

for a few more weeks, 

summer always feels officially over when school begins!

My prayers are for lots of tots and parents this morning 

as many weather tides of

fears and tears 

of letting go etc...

Sometimes I pinch myself

at how once upon a time 

The Summer of Life seemed to stretch

endlessly ahead!

Now I turn to see its 'eternity'

 as nothing more than a splash of sun-sparkles

on a sea-swept shore...

Time winks and whisks another summer into memory books

As sentimental mothers gaze with fond and lingering looks

At days that sweetly, swiftly swept through outstretched hearts and hands

To join their predecessors kept in bygone’s far-flung lands

Time winks and weeps where wonder thunders beneath our skin

No wish or want can keep at bay the future closing in

Where all the while new day beguiles with new moments released

Like quilt patches in Bygone’s counterpane, each one is pieced

Time winks and weeps and flies and tries to fit us with new shoes

That life insists upon and no one is ready to choose

(How in the whirl of little boys and girls did I become

A strange, yet splitting image of a version of ‘me mum’) (my mom)

Time winks and weeps and flies and leaps, an agile acrobat

That balances on heartstrings and bows as he tips his hat

While we gather our bearings with a trembling chin held high

Bracing Ourselves for love’s next round of hello and good-bye

…while oceanic tempests surge and crash on shores unseen

While we gaze in amazement at where summer’s isle had been

While time winks, weeps, and flies and leaps across echo-glossed bars

While we brush summer from our cheeks in a blur of salt-stars

© Janet Martin

Grand-sonny- 1st day of SK!💖

Once Upon Many a Wistful Morrow (have been here and gone)

Happy September!!!

And to Adam He said:

“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife

and have eaten from the tree

of which I commanded you not to eat,

cursed is the ground because of you;

through toil you will eat of it

all the days of your life.

18Both thorns and thistles it will yield for you,

and you will eat the plants of the field.

19By the sweat of your brow

you will eat your bread,

until you return to the ground—

because out of it were you taken.

For dust you are,

and to dust you shall return.”

Gen.3:17-19 (BSB)

We have toiled 'by the sweat of our brow', haven't we?!!

And Lord willing we are not done yet!

And we have eaten, haven't we?!

Thank-you, gracious Heavenly Father!

While not everything may have bloomed, obedient to expectation's hope, 

as we planted seeds, seedlings, and bulbs,

we are thankful for what often exceeds hope and expectation! 

From Fancy's Dream of a plethora of colorful dahlias....

to bushy reluctant bloomers 

that buried the planters until I moved them

From barren field with dust flying to a sweep of golden butterfly-like flutters...

From blank canvas....

...to our Creator's Masterpieces!!

A reflection and reply to this poem from May...

Once Upon a Wistful Morrow (demands full attention now)

Spring's Wistful Morrow-World, my dear, has now been nearly spent..

Its planted plot and furrow unfurled in fruit-testament

Hope, giddy with spring's fantasy of flowers, bears the yoke

Of disappointment and delight; for blooms are not bespoke

And so we choose to cherish what was granted, midst withheld

Before the present perishes as past and future meld

Where we, all struggling students 'neath the tutelage of God

Are learning patient prudence, for no hand can force a bud

Or undo, what in Eden, routed man's eternal rest

As Eve and Adam doubted and put God's Word to the test

Where the infested ground we till still yields to human race

The bread we eat, the flower frill, like emblems of God's grace

Where, though spring's Wistful Morrow may not unfold as we planned

We know both joy and sorrow's plume are cradled in God's Hand

© Janet Martin

And the sunrise was no slouch either!!!

The last pic in my spring post made me a bit teary...

These tots seem so much bigger already!

September's Remnant or September Leaves

Here's to the last week of September/summer's embers...

This poem is for we who mourn the loss of sun-warm hours and flowers

Yet eagerly await autumn's ambience and Beauty-brilliant bowers

I had to keep reigning this poem in...

It was eager to become a full-fledged fall poem but not yet!

Let's linger on September's remnant, shall we?

Time enough for autumn to have its way...

I couldn't quite decide what picture to use on this post

so it was just waiting, then I went to get the mail

and in the mailbox was a thoughtful surprise

 dropped off by a friend. 

(I partially blotted the name for privacy's sake)

This bundle reminded me that in a sense

 it is always summer in friendship's world💗😎

September’s remnant slips through cracks of summer season shorn

Where garden plot seems to relax, it’s brunt of bearing borne

Where blue jay’s harsh shriek rends the air where purple asters stream

Where poplar fronds begin to flare and pumpkin lanterns gleam

September’s remnant snares where we cannot undo its thread

Earth’s dusty, musky thoroughfares don glints of gold and red

And while we stare at summer spent, we feel it steal within

Where fingers cannot circumvent the tug of buds worn thin

Thought lingers for a little in past’s precious picture-show

Where time turns lush leaves brittle in its subtle undertow

Each treetop like a candle waiting on earth’s window sill

September’s remnant mantle like a fading canticle

Ah, who can bear to mope where hope pitches its sterling tent

September’s remnant gilds the slope where summer came and went

It dapples orchard limbs and lanes with apples, sweet yet tart

As hunger grapples with the pains that farewell’s pangs impart

The wind is like a busker playing saxophone and flute

Its audiences gather beneath lampposts full of fruit

Longing and satisfaction's sabers flash and clash; crowds roar

Caught on the sparkles of a splash that was and is no more

October loiters in yon brake, eager to be unfurled

And turn summer’s lackluster wake into a colour-world

To gather up September’s remnant in jubilant toll

Turning loss to contentment with beauty out of control

As expectation is fulfilled in autumn’s gorgeous show

As goldenrod turns silver-gilt and woodland-torches glow

With autumn’s awesome tinsel, scarlet, auburn, russet, bronze

Happiness finds fresh footholds as September’s remnant wans

© Janet Martin

Ah, who can bear to mope where hope pitches its sterling tent...

To Frame a Memory...

Today is perfect cup-o'-java-joy-bottomless-refill weather!

Part of the reason I spent this morning's hours outdoors 

was the promise of a rain-song afternoon!

I began painting another poem this morning, 

then got distracted by duty and beauty

While along came this poem to

 interrupt the previous one...

'composed' by the last 24 hours of life!

A peek onto a poet's 'colour-palette' 😊

If I could I would frame it;

that moment when she and I

stood spellbound by an egret

beneath autumn's brooding sky

That cozy fall contentment

with a coffee-pot between

That season of enchantment;

as bronze seeped through summer green

That solace of the woodland

and its shadow-dappled path

Its palace built with remnants

of butterfly aftermath

The orchard that not long ago

was wreathed in white and pink

Lanes decked in perfumed petal snow

Where now red apples wink

Dawn, as it drew ajar

windows of opportunity

Dusk, as it pinned a star

on pages of fresh history

September's cinnamon-kissed sweeps

we tasted with our eyes

The playful puppy as it leapt

through laughter's paradise

Saturday pitter-patter fueled

by rain-symphony 

Where ink and order dueled

(they will never quite agree)

My mother in her kerchief, warm

against fall's chill embrace

Love, evoking a perfect storm

*for joys so un-commonplace

Wonder, in all its rapture

never snared by brush or pen

I wish that I could capture it

to touch and taste again

...and then I smile, and then I say

Thank God for poetry

A poem is the perfect way

To frame a memory

Janet Martin

* a mother's kerchief-framed

most-beloved-of-all-faces

is anything but commonplace 

so I edited that sentence💖

Another un-commonplace joy today

is my parent's 58th wedding anniversary!