Where Autumn is Life's Sister...

This morning I asked Victoria to take a picture as a keepsake of the sacred commonplace... Of countless times in our 34 years of marriage,Jim realizing, he could arrange his route to come by the houseto grab a coffee and breakfast sandwich etc.giving me a heads-up call when he is almost here so he can just pull over,trade empty containers for full onesand carry on with a thank-you and see you in a few days... As I turned and looked at the yard, frigid with first snowflakes but clinging valiantly to its glow of goldlike Woman vainly gripping the fraying edges of the garb of middle age, the need for this poem of why I love Autumn so much, washed over me... The woo of purple blue scarves draped on skyline filigreeThe curb appeal of Today, caped in Autumn’s fineryThe holiness of hunger no five-star meal can assuageThe happiness of wonder too epic for ink and pageThe glory of the hilltop cascading its color-roarLike an Artist’s tipped palette immersing the valley floorThe rush of season-splendor undulating, wave on waveAn orchestra of grandeur serenading the cold graveAs sweep of rain song clinches nature’s prey to gray archivesGold leaves like drunken finches sail from trees in wild nose dives The sorrow of surrender and its bittersweet reliefTime’s touch, so harsh, yet tender in the binding of the sheafThe land, a grand portrayal of meager glimpses of HeWho overflows earth’s table with fringes of majestyThe bright October afternoon poured from welkin canteenIn a mirage-collage of June’s peppermint, misty greenJuly’s gold wheat fields rippling, August’s aquamarine seaSeptember’s orchards twinkling like glass jars of rosehip teaThe poet, as she grapples with time’s ever-ebbing swellOf blossoms turned to apples, of hello turned to farewell The sense of Something Sacred swirling, slipping, tripping byAn elfin ballerina twirling on a splash of skyA sentimental molding of love’s carousel of crumbsOf holding soon enfolding what all letting go becomesAn impression of moments caught like petals in an urnOf girls becoming women in a world of no returnOf murmurs snared from summers sparkling like a bit of brookThrough pages filled with darkling pictures tucked into a bookWhere autumn is Life’s sister walking through joy rife with griefAn empathetic whisper unraveling leaf by leaf © Janet Martin