Ode To October...

October's Swansong Begins... 

 

OctPoWriMo day 30; sensitivity

Oh, sanguine charmer of the eye

You tease summer from trees and hills

With glades of gold, with scarlet ply

Extravagant, your palette spills

To fill the world with butterflies

A heaven-on-earth-paradise

Persimmon-rose-bronze-blended prize

A sacred dread instills

Oh, bold enticer of the heart

You draw worship from every ‘ah’

And with each brush-stroke you impart

To atheistic-boast, pure awe

At the authority of He

Who paints Earth’s panoramic lea

With autographs of majesty

In nature’s supreme law

Oh, seasoned spender of our sighs

Oh, tender troubadour of trees

Your leaf-and-lonely-limb good-byes

Ignite love’s soul-sweet agonies

In pumpkins, kissed with crumbled mist

In frosted flasks where you untwist

Morning, poured in silk amethyst

You have no enemies

Oh, author of apprenticeship
You gild then strip the supple clime
While in the orchard branches drip
Ruddy swansongs in apple-chime 
The nectar of hope's harvest pressed
And caught in cups of sparkling zest 
Where scholars holy-humbly blessed
Savor sun-flavored Time

Oh, keeper of our sorrow-storms

Love’s holding close and letting go

Is a keen winnowing as arms

Learn the lordship of seasons, oh

And like relinquishment of leaves

Of flowers spent and garnered sheaves

Gratitude swells while thought soft-grieves

October’s golden snow

© Janet Martin

Built on The Best of Times

The other evening Victoria and I stood here imagining how our cottage would look, after I told her there used to be a house and/or barn here long, long ago. This is why the lilac bush blooms seemingly in the middle of nowhere and why grape hyacinths spill in purple rivers down the hill in spring...

Between the lilac bush and tree

We built a cottage made of stone

Where wild grape hyacinth runs free

And ivy climbs the walls of home

Its window-boxes spill with blooms

Its walls harbor a hundred nooks

And braided mats warm wooden rooms

That sail the world in story-books

The tea kettle sings tiralee

The scones, are butter-warm, oh my

And it is always half-past tea

Where the clock is a big, blue sky

Between the lilac bush and tree

The best of Times accumulate

To build a cottage, snug and wee

Where Mary Poppins and friends wait

...and after dark, when all is still
And moonlit bathed and filled with sprites
We'll sit upon the silver hill
and watch heaven turn on its lights

© Janet Martin

A Word of Caution to Would-be Poets...

Afternoon is like a blanket that wraps morning in its splay

And leaves the poet feeling like a poem slipped away

The melody of Muse is half-torture, half ecstasy

For nothing can quite satisfy the love of poetry

Perpetual indulgence is not for the faint of heart

The hunter and the hunted always one poem apart

Beware, the air is rife with that which ever vexes Thought

The fragment of a poem that can never quite be caught

© Janet Martin

Of Bard Bereft...

We watch while the wind dismantles the world

With leaves and weaves within its revelries

A panoramic emptiness unfurled

In a riot of quietening trees

Where ethereal ellipses rush, then hush

A-bye, a lilied labyrinth of sighs

Melding to centuries that tune the brush

With muffled, inevitable good-byes

And eyes, glued to the screens of here and now

Cannot quite hold the fullness of it all

Resigning Evidence to tears that flow

In mimicking of rain and leaves that fall

Beneath the touch and tripe of troubadours

Who know the pen can never quite descry

The pathos and the beauty that soft-pours

Against the backdrop of bare trees and sky

© Janet Martin

The Full Impact of Caught Between

On afternoons like this I miss the way it used to be

Before The After played its part

And humored history

There’s something about blue-gray baritone that steals my heart

And makes me wish for days before

After painted its art

The clock indulges vanity until it disappears
We are all part of a bigger
Masterpiece of yester-years

The interlude before After and after spent Befores

Can feel surreal though dressed in common

Cloth of common chores

Seasons are more than blue-eyed, button-nosed half-kiss affairs
They tune our touch with learning and our
Fellowship with prayers

Their intermingling rush of greeting and love’s farewell kiss

Can make one feel quite caught between

On afternoons like this

© Janet Martin