A wave of want and wonder
Washes soft, into a sigh
Beneath November-splendor
Of autumn's guerdon; good-bye
The wind woos and siphons adieus of gold
From limbs languishing, lusterless and cold
Like artwork, pencil-sketched, etched on a page
Of mottled aftermath and frost-dipped sage
Where feet of come-and-going dash across
The hands committed to time’s albatross
The air is silence-steeped where loss of leaves
Muffles our tread with Whiling’s winnowed sheaves
The crown of nature (like
all living must
After its breath of
life) returns to dust
The dreamer and the doer, side by side
Caught in an urn of unrelenting tide
See, on the prow of Now, unstoppered chance
Runs through the brow of autumn’s weathered stance
Where blush of laugh-and-dancing June becomes
The hush to which each eager noon succumbs
Its particles of life-to-death enmesh
And meld to primal steppingstones of flesh
Ah, yes, we say, oh, no; and so it goes
The green fields of the mind cling to the rose
While season’s seamless synchronicity
Undresses and refurbishes the lea
Like illusion, warm in a child’s embrace
Is honed to the bone by breathing’s wild wind-chase
A mantle of purple presses its tulle
Across tresses of Time’s hulled push and pull
A hand of mercy blesses mortal plight
Replenishing the bud culled of delight
And where wild apples dapple dormant fields
Earth’s tomb is rife with bloom that springtime yields
© Janet Martin
