Over...

 With the 'mellow full-moon'  it really is a beautiful farewell party.

Leave then, leave

If you must

Over a carpet

Of cricket-tuned dust

Over the skyline

To bygone beyonds

Over the echo

Of lost, empty ponds

Over the slumbering

Wild-bloom as it nods

Over the platoon

Of  green goldenrod

Over the farmer

Who lays fast asleep

Over the woodland

Mysterious and deep

Over the moments

That ceaselessly rush

Over the mellow full-moon

Midnight hush

Leave then, Sweet July

Leave if you will

August trips lightly

Over the blue hill

© Janet Martin

Drop...

…and

the drop swells

expanding, spreading

lifting, filling, overflowing, spilling

from spoon to cup to clay pots

to puddles to pools to meandering brooks

to winding creeks to gushing, rushing rivers

to churning, surging channels to the mighty, rolling sea

to…eternity where the drop is the sea

and the sea is a…

Drop

July's Departure

I beg you to hold me in your azure gaze

Dance to a warm willow-vesper

Nurture my mind with abandonment’s blaze

Sweeten my mouth with your whisper

Cradle me where you will seal my last kiss

Gather me in your brawny hunger

Torture me tenderly in your farewell bliss

Tarry until I am younger

You know that I will not shackle the gate

I know that you must be leaving

Passion and sorrow; love’s juxtaposed weight

Entwine in bittersweet grieving

I beg you to hold me, sweet azure July

But moments do not pause or linger

Caught in a vortex of half-breaths, a sigh

You vanish on my outstretched fingers…

© Janet Martin

Preeminent Farewell

There’s a key change in the wind today

It drops from a lilt to a sigh

It clings to the tendrils of wild morning-glory

In the preeminence of good-bye

Tomorrow perhaps it may cart-wheel or amble

Nonchalantly over high-noon

Today it lingers; fingering the tassels

Of July; leaving way too soon

Long we a-wait the coveted candor

Of mid-summer’s languid kin-ship

Somewhere within its mellow meandering

Over Time’s fringes it slips

There is a key change in the late afternoon

It trickles from lintels of musk

Pooling in mouths of day-lily blooms

Then disappearing into the dusk…

Solemn, the orchestra of cricket-song

Ushers her over a floor

Of stubble and clover; while we are asleep

July suddenly is no more…

© Janet Martin

Un-spilled

Unscripted oceans

Ebb and flow

Somewhere inside of me

A surging, swelling

Undertow

Of un-spilled poetry

Where is the key

To set it free?

What seals this aching flood?

The rising, falling

Agony

Of poet’s un-spilled blood

How do I trace

A formless face

Or spell what yet is not?

And how do I

Escape the cry

Of a poet’s un-spilled thought?

© Janet Martin

 It's true; we can run but we cannot hide...

Waking...

Soft morning’s lavish profusion of grace

Creeps though the window and kisses my face

From pink misty meadow against thinning dark

A minuet ripples of cricket and lark

Out on the skyline the woodlot is blue

The color of wishing and missing you

Triumph and heartache in mystic shades splay

Nobody knows which it will be today

Yesterday’s wheat field is nothing but stubble

Such is the yield of this life and its trouble

© Janet Martin

The Barred Gate

We can’t return to the ‘before’

There is no back-to-history door

We cannot retrace one hour

Nor force to bud again, the flower

We cannot undo the ‘done’

Or retrieve a moment gone

Onward, upward is this climb

We cannot go back in time

Swift these transient morsels slip

Fleeting vapor on the lip

Over ramparts we have built

Pleasure, victory, shame or guilt

We can’t return to the ‘before’

Yesterday has sealed its door

Live well the moment you are in

For it will not pass again

© Janet Martin

Where the Crater's of the Heart Run Deep

Where the craters of the heart run jagged and deep

I tuck a leaf, a petal to keep

A head of wheat, a ray of sun

July, why do you leave when you’ve scarcely begun?

Queen Ann’s Lace, midnight-cricket’s song

I know it will not be very long

Until they are swallowed by the hour’s hungry lips

Or plucked by Time’s scrupulous fingertips

Where the craters of the heart run blood-deep

I seal the echo of the willow-sweep

Or the soft brush of your warmth on my ear

As you whisper good-bye and disappear

Take me to the ball-room of wide open sky

Hold me for one final dance, sweet July

Then I will release you forever to keep

Fragments of you where the heart’s craters run deep

J~

I stared at the date this morning…mildly shocked. I have not been paying much attention to the numbers on the calendar! July…where did you go and how? Oh yes, now I know, you slipped away on the breeze that blows over golden oceans of rippling wheat, over sun-sparkled waters and clover-sweet. You slithered through shaded willow-bower and dangled from the sultry high-noon hour…You faded a little with every petal that fell…Oh beautiful, beautiful July,  farewell!