This poem was my entry for the "Fall" challenge at Faitwriters.com last September, and I thought I'd share it in honor of the changing weather.
Be blessed,
Cat
COME HARVEST TIME
Ava wakes to sparrow’s song
heralding dawn
and the balm of fall
fluttering in on dawn’s wing:
a harbinger
of harvest time.
Rising from her slumber,
she welcomes another day’s breaking,
but Ava is not mistaking
the herald’s proclamation of fall
riding in on dawn’s wing
with the hope
of harvest time.
Twas twelve months past
she last awakened
heart breaking open
and taking wing at dawn
to welcome fall,
recalling once more
his promise to come home
come harvest time.
The words he whispered
before he closed the door
behind him,
sealing off before from the morrow,
echo in her heart the year round.
“I’ll be back, you’ll see.
Pray for me.
And look for me this fall
come harvest time.”
Holed up in their shanty
Ava waited, marking time
by moon’s phases
and lines scratched on the door
that sealed off tomorrow from before
his promise to return
come harvest time.
Far too many
years
of months
of empty days
and lonely nights
have passed
for Ava to grasp
how long she’s been biding time
marking days
and seasons
waiting for
another
harvest time.
On this morning Ava rises
answering the sparrow’s call
with psalms of praise
and promise
of hope restored,
of bounties
stocked up for the morrow
that could be waiting now today
just outside the door.
It’s harvest time
She bathes and powders,
dresses in her Sunday best
dons jewelry, bracelets, rings,
adorns herself in finery,
and perches on the front porch swing
to watch, and listen, for signs
of his return
riding in on fall’s wing.
It’s harvest time.
There Ava passes
from today
into the harvest
of evermore.
© 2009
Catrina Bradley
"God rewrote the text of my life when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes." Psalm 18:24 (Msg)
