Loved watching the ebb and flow of the tide when we were in the Maritimes this fall...
(this poem is of a slightly different tide inspired by a gray November day)
(this poem is of a slightly different tide inspired by a gray November day)
It claws at skin-veiled appetence and seeps out in each
breath
It wars where confidence and creed collect hallmarks of
death
And ushers in the harvest where the seeds of hunger fell
It startles us with colours tinting contrails of farewell
As soft and sound it severs what is bound beyond our
clutch
And swings its pendulum of air through thoroughfares of
touch
But siphons, in so doing life’s vaporous repertoire
Inexorable wooing, like the wind through leafless spire
The rhythm of time’s metronome composes common ground
Tick-tock, tick-tock, its airborne clock like a
merry-go-round
Where we, aboard a carousel of fare-thee-well and thrill
Are bound by Simply Being to its four-season quadrille
To marvel at the intricacy of the bud, to mourn
How swift its petals strew the mud in madrigals forlorn
And how the gift of now keeps turning in the Thing we prize
To startle us with echoes from the dust of its demise
November knights the embers of autumn with stars of snow
It tugs at noble hearts with pangs begot by letting go
And kindles from the ashes of love’s potent passion spent
The comfort of home fires without youth’s heady torment
Where Age wears scars and laugh-lines like badges of
honor, earned
Through wars it fought while being taught what those
before it learned
While tick-tock tunes a tide of morn-noon-night while
seasons roll
To vex vapor-virility with death-anointed toll
© Janet Martin
