Sweet Summer...part 3

Click links below for

Sweet Summer- Part 1

Sweet Summer- Part 2

I began this poem the other day,

to commemorate the tipping point of August's halfway mark! 💖💖💖

Halo of gold and maroon...

Serenade of cricket-croon...

Where the floral colour-spree

Lures bard, 

butterfly...

and bee; (the bees wouldn't sit still enough to give me a good shot 😅)

Where the wonder of the world

Sparkles in dew-gilt unfurled...

Of gardens, bursting, and how

With earth’s tables heaped with chow...

Halo of gold and maroon

Serenade of cricket-croon

Morn, noon night, vibrato-lilt

Trembles in ensembles, spilt

Where the sizzling heat wave broods

Over dark and still-life woods

Where the floral colour-spree

Lures bard, butterfly and bee

Where the cornfields grow and grow

Like infantry, row on row

Where the florid landscape lies

Like a Painter’s Paradise

Where the wonder of the world

Sparkles in dew-gilt unfurled

Feeds the whine of combine-loot

Weighs the wispy vine with fruit

Stuns the poet, middle-stride

With the ink of August-tide

With the hazy, lazy grief

Of boughs, dense with sighing/dying leaf

Of gardens, bursting, and how

With earth’s tables heaped with chow

Of the gard’ner, overcome

By a seed’s volupt’ous sum

Of the brook, bereft of lay

Lyrics lost to reeds and clay

Of the pigment of the rose

Formula God only knows

Of wild lilies of the field

Spilling in copious yield

Of the rush, before the hush

After sedum’s school-girl blush

Of fleet, bittersweet dog-days

Of summer’s soft-slipping ways

Of the hummingbird that drinks

From bloom founts; reds, purples, pinks

Of hydrangea’s lavish crown

Pretty as a bridal gown

Of orchards in quiescent form

Like the calm before the storm

Of kitchens filled with chop-slice

Vinegar and pickling-spice

Dill, parsley, basil, foray

Canners never put away

Menus brightened with fresh voice

Where the cook is spoiled for choice

While the spider spins and spins

While summer’s silk lining thins

While dust wafts o’er dusky day

While the barefoot children play

While the mother collects art

Lost to touch but kept in heart

While the fondness for each flow’r

Falls prey to the baying hour

Falls prey to Bygone’s clenched fist

Clutching at frayed fronds of mist

© Janet Martin

Of hydrangea’s lavish crown

Pretty as a bridal gown...

Of kitchens filled with chop-slice

Vinegar and pickling-spice...

Dill, parsley, basil, foray...

Canners never put away...

Menus brightened with fresh voice

Where the cook is spoiled for choice...

While the spider spins and spins

While summer’s silk lining thins

While dust wafts o’er dusky day...

While the barefoot children play...

Sweet Summer- Part two

"Summer afternoon; summer afternoon; 

to me those have always been the two most beautiful words 

in the English language." 

Henry James

Summer morning, afternoon and night are celebration-worthy, 

don't you agree?!

compilation # 2  of summer mementos

(sweet summer part one HERE)

Sweet summer is mornings, swathed in soft-mist cape

A rushing recurrence of wonder, agape...

A landscape where lilies of garden and field

Awes/Wows worship with whispers of Heaven revealed...

Where work of an Artist anoints our gaze

With countryside canvases agog with praise...

From fine feathered choristers filling the glade

With joy for the new day the Lord has made

Sweet summer is soaking in sun-shaded nooks

With cuppa hot java and basket of books

Sweet summer’s to-do lists are not hard to bear

Of tending the garden, then gleaning fresh fare...

Sweet summer is ever the tenderest yen

Of troubadour-tug of wars twixt plow and pen...

Good Lord full of mercy, what is Woman to do

With sink full of dishes, and world full of You...

Sweet summer is mornings, swathed in soft-mist cape

A rushing recurrence of wonder, agape

A landscape where lilies of garden and field

Awes/Wows worship with whispers of Heaven revealed

Where work of an Artist anoints our gaze

With countryside canvases agog with praise

From fine feathered choristers filling the glade

With joy for the new day the Lord has made

Impressing the Creature, human-nature bent

To trust in their Teacher and thus be content

Sweet summer is soaking in sun-shaded nooks

With cuppa hot java and basket of books

To take a break from toil’s beck of grins and groans

That earns the sweet slumber of work-weary bones

From redeeming wisely each hour, for we know

The truth of the precept; 'we reap what we sow'

And it is not prudent to sit idle long

Nor is it idleness to join in the song

That trembles in tresses of maple and birch

Above grassy pews in an open-air church

Sweet summer’s to-do lists are not hard to bear

Of tending the garden, then gleaning fresh fare

Of weeding and pruning and mowing for hours

To enjoy the company of birds and flow’rs

To commune with the kind Creator of these;

Hilltops fringed with stately silhouettes of trees

Meadows hung from ethereal rafters, azure

Rivers full of laughter and fisherman’s lure

Larkspur’s purple pleasure for butterflies, bees

And we who delight in the Maker of these

Sweet summer is ever the tenderest yen

Of troubadour-tug of wars twixt plow and pen

Good Lord full of mercy, what is Woman to do

With sink full of dishes, and world full of You

Where Time’s fleeting fuel, so briefly bestows

Creation’s crown jewel in every rose

And Poet is eager to tame onto page

Fond scenes to revisit when winter gales rage

Like sweet summer morning, swathed in mint-green mist

Like long summer evening, dust and dew kissed

Like slow summer afternoons, muzzled, it seems

Where breeze is too lazy to ruffle the streams

Where the former riot of bird song and screech

Grows quiet, save for the sea gulls at the beach

Where mothers are ready for tots to take naps

And shake out the warm nest made of arms and laps

Where Cat that Dog chases, gets a holiday

Where yon slope showcases sun and shadow play

Where God tips a treasure vault of petal-wealth

Where reeds turn russet, as they drink to their health

Sweet summer is never presumptuous enough

To give us too much of everything we love

Then, break its bread rev’rently, savour each crumb

Of buttercup, daisy, of delphinium

And linger a little bit longer because

What is today's Is, will be tomorrow’s Was

Save, if by the grace of God He grants the ink

To press into poem endless poppy-pink

To capture, like the fragrance of lavender

The rapturous wonder of sweet, sweet summer

...because there is always a yesterday tugging

Always a precious today that needs hugging

 Always tomorrow, tonight holds at bay

Always a moment slip-slipping away

Always, in spite of  bygone's vast eons stilled

An eager emptiness waiting to be filled

Ah, sweet, sweetest summer, you do your best part

At keeping us younger/keening the hunger in years of the heart

Though we sense Past's eloquence, hour by hour

As we collect happiness/holiness, flower by flow'r

© Janet Martin

Where Time’s fleeting fuel, so briefly bestows

Creation’s crown jewel in every rose...

Ode for Summer's Poets

 

Where meals are gathered from a garden-green charcuterie

Oh my, but fresh-picked goodness garners five stars, hard to beat

In simple supper-salad satisfaction guarantee

Where summer's poets thank the Lord for poems they can eat

Where golding wheat field billows like an ocean ebbs and flows...

Where overhead the sky beckons in bottomless blue pose/prose...

Where flower gardens toss a lure, sure to delight the sigh

Of summer's poets enchanted by petaled color-splurge...

Where bees are buried to their knees inside each nectar-fount...

Where golding wheat field billows like an ocean ebbs and flows

Where rural routes are fringed with wild lupine and chamomile

Where overhead the sky beckons in bottomless blue pose/prose

To summer's poets hypnotized by ballads that beguile

Where finding happiness is easier in sweet July

Where daybreak rolls across earth’s shoreline in a coral surge

Where flower gardens toss a lure, sure to delight the sigh

Of summer's poets enchanted by petaled color-splurge

Where bees are buried to their knees inside each nectar-fount

Where there are blooms enough to satisfy the thirst of all

Where the Creator knows how to stoke a syllabic count

From summer's poets eager to compose a madrigal

Where an air of contentment settles like dew-heady dust

Where clover fields yield a perfumed playground for butterflies

Where every backroad rouses a wild streak of wanderlust

In summer's poets looking for a country paradise

Where meals are gathered from a garden-green charcuterie

Oh my, but fresh-picked goodness garners five stars, hard to beat

In simple supper-salad satisfaction guarantee

Where summer's poets thank the Lord for poems they can eat

Where we hop out of bed to watch the sun come up at five

Where we linger till ten to feel dusk’s symphony immerse

Our senses, where best reasons we are glad to be alive

Keen summer's poets pressed for time to tame them into verse

Where July is an arms-wide-open, welcome-home embrace

Where shadow-pools beneath the maple tree are dark and deep

Where lavish looms spin lilies, lavender and Queen Ann’ s lace

While summer's poets smile and snare fond mementos to keep

© Janet Martin

Where we linger till ten to feel dusk’s symphony immerse

Our senses,...

Sweet Summer (part 1)

 Welcome, sweet summer!

Ps.19: part of verses 4 and 6

In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun...

...nothing is deprived of its warmth.

Sweet summer, with so much to love we hardly know where to begin…

Where heady scent of fresh-mown hay hangs heavy on dawn’s dewy hush/brush...

Where countless hues of green imbue the rolling view, leafy and lush...

I love the calm after a storm, thunders through twilight like a train

Leaving behind a dazzling world, adorned with jewelry of rain...

Sweet summer, with so much to love, each day feels like precious fling

As earth and its fulness thereof begins to laugh, and leap and sing

Where heady scent of fresh-mown hay hangs heavy on dawn’s dewy hush/brush

Where countless hues of green imbue the rolling view, leafy and lush

Sweet summer’s thoroughfare is frilled with flowers, wonderful and wild

The garden bears the eager, carefree, banter of a bare foot child

Tree canopies cast cooling pools of shadow play across the yard

Against the wall behind the house, handsome hollyhocks stand on guard

I love the calm after a storm, thunders through twilight like a train

Leaving behind a dazzling world, adorned with jewelry of rain

I love the caroling of songbirds welcoming the day, still dark

I love the sounds of children playing in the splash pad at the park

In sweet summer we slow our pace lest we miss beauty to behold

Where duty’s never-ending chase runs through joys that never grow old

Beneath the arbor lavished with fragrant, purple wisteria-sigh

Through puddles on the laneway, strewn like mirror-fragments, full of sky

Sweet summer, with so much to touch and taste and smell and see and do

Ah, ‘what is man?’ we cry to He who runs awe’s happy wonder through

With strawberry and cherry bliss pleasing palates of everyone

With wheat fields billowing like oceans turning gold beneath the sun

Sweet summertime, when life is like a gift we open every morn

Its misty wrapping melts like butter over gleaming fields of corn

And we are glad with simple things like picnic basket’s smorgasbord

A pleasure fit for queens and kings, that everybody can afford

Sweet summer, tugging us between task and basking in pools of shade

Content with a good book and glass of iced coffee or lemonade

Where days flit by like butterflies, where school doors close and scholars grin

Sweet summer, with so much to love we hardly know where to begin…

© Janet Martin

Sweet summertime, when life is like a gift we open every morn

Its misty wrapping melts like butter over gleaming fields of corn...

Beneath the arbor lavished with fragrant, purple wisteria-sigh...

With wheat fields billowing like oceans turning gold beneath the sun...