Hard, hard, beneath our feet silk-soft the lofty season
slips
It strips the lushness from the land like laughter from its
lips
The swelling harvest disappears; December’s day is stark
Where echoes waft like silver snowflakes strumming early
dark
The boulevard is brushed with brittle scuttle-song of leaf
The pasture-land is hushed; its little bloom in gathered
sheaf
And thought is like a room that tries to hold what it cannot
December’s day the skin and bone of time’s tittle and jot
How hardly we have held the Thing that melts within our clutch
How deftly day and night can wean beneath our very touch
A lifetime; always giving us what we can never keep
December’s day like a mother singing her child to sleep
Still, still the skylines blush, the rush of tick and tock
deploys
Another round of push and pull to vex life’s grievous joys
Where holding on is always the prelude to letting go
Each climax fades; December’s day a passive afterglow
© Janet Martin
