Bitty Dusk Ballad...

Few things prettier than dawn-to-dusk, in May's days...

The gilt that etched dawn’s frosted sketch deepens to amber-rose

Dusk’s canvas leaned against the west showcases day’s repose

Its silhouettes of raven ink on bronze and pink become

An echo melded to the cast of Past’s immortal sum

Somewhere a Hand gathers the remnant hemline of today

Beneath His tender touch the countryside is tucked away

The Maker of the morning tips a vault of diamond jars

And splays across night’s heights a panorama made of stars

© Janet Martin

February's Summer Dusk

While looking for another photo I found these, 

transporting me from the growling g-r-r-r of B-r-r-r!! 

to h-m-m-m of Summer M-m-m-m!

When winds shake the world in jowls, churlish and brusque

I sing me a ditty of gold summer dusk

Of kitty-soft vesper ‘neath velveteen skies

Of starlight like diamonds in love’s laughing eyes

Of plush, purple pillows on lush, lowered eaves

Where feather-frond willows strum heaven’s plum sheaves

And hillsides grow sleepy while whispers undo

Their clamor of color with layers of blue

I sing of the things that make summer kings glad

Like rainbows of zinnia, the grin of a lad

With fists full of wiggle and squiggle and dirt

While wily wars trouble time’s bubble with hurt

And we do our best to shoulder Westward’s weight

Where summer dusk opens its ethereal gate

And slips through the trusses of dust-sweet so-long

Of musky caresses and dew-dappled gong

…of rock-a-bye rivers that rush to the sea

Of lull-a-sigh quivers in yon poplar tree

Of ballads where nothing but air plucks the strings

Where baby-dear slumbers and mother-dear sings

And flower-lid droops, its ambrosial grail

A-readied for honey-bee’s wake-up wassail

So, let the wind howl; a churl, burly and brusque

He can’t reach the girl lost in sweet summer dusk

© Janet Martin

Dusk-Getaway...

After the last kiddos were gone I had a mini-getaway on the deck

where dusk was tucking the day with a soft pink-gray shawl...

 

Let me linger for a little

With my face glued to the sky

Daylight is a silver circle

Soon soft-kissed with lullaby

Take me where the blue air deepens

Until the world disappears

In a sea scattered with sequins

And the throb of yester-years

Darling, let’s forget to hurry

Take a twilit holiday

Where bare fields and trees turn blurry

Then soft, softly fade away

© Janet Martin

Dusk Doggerel

When Brantley isn't horsing around with auntie or Uncle 

he likes to stand at the kitchen window and look out at the world.

            Tonight after supper as he stood there I wondered if he wondered where his world went...

Now trundles through the countryside

A drifter known as Eventide

His coat is velvet dark-blue-dyed

Soft, soft his footsteps fall

And in the ebbing light of day

While vesper’s benedictions play

Croft and hillside slip, slip away

Beneath a shapeless shawl

And all that we have left to see

Of this small day that used to be

Are memories of you and me

No drifter can rescind

He wanders up and down the street

Across bare fields once bronze with wheat

I hear him whistle, low and sweet

Or is it just the wind

He climbs time’s seasoned belvederes

And flings the coat he’s worn for years

Across a world that disappears

In windows framing black

Save ribbons trailing purple-pink

Along the paling tree-lined brink

He waves his farewell wand, I think

With starry bric-a-brac

© Janet Martin

Brusque November Dusk (a twist to the previous poem:)

 It is dark, rainy, cold. The perfect night for a bit of word-play:)

 This is the previous poem with a mood-swing...

Plowed fields like still-life oceans lie

Beneath blue bluffs of frozen sky

Transfixed, the ridge, with rigid trees

Shoulders the ranks of centuries

Their forms sketched, shamelessly and stark

Against the brush of early dark

The wind wanders; wonders alone

Where have the minstrels of dusk gone?

No lilt of leaf to tease the air

And please the straggler pausing where

The song of billabong and seas

Would softly sweep through sleepy trees

November’s brogue is roguish, bold

It moans at doors closed to the cold

West’s embers cannot keep their spark

Day disappears into the dark

Save for gold rectangular shapes

Dotting black worlds with window-scapes

Somewhere the laughter of a child

Is summer kissed and morning wild

But here day’s end folds like a fist

Into November’s morgue of mist

Twilight, a lonesome land bereft

Like a ghost-town with no one left

© Janet Martin