To Dear November, a Fond Farewell

Another blip aka November slips through our fingers...

fading into a wild flurry of white tonight...

To purple shadows planted on dusk’s barren, burnished path

To sudden snow globe afternoons rekindling Christmas thrill

To fall and winter’s duels in the muted aftermath

Of leaf song winnowed from woodlands now dark and stark and still

To gleaming furrows turned and tucked like umber counterpanes

To harvest-hymn hiatus and to skies that steal the show

To echo-tangos tugging at heartstrings taut/fraught with refrains

Of love, laughter and longing’s ever learning to let go

To winds that wander through a world of golden tapers snuffed

To squash and pumpkin lanterns gleaned and baked and steamed and fried

To brooding tableaus transformed by a big white duvet, fluffed

Until it spills soft feathers over town and countryside

To joy, because of juncos, to the blue jays’ raucous cries

To winter’s feathered friends returned like long lost family

To reveling in the raw agony of time’s demise

To making the most of what all too soon is history

To dear November’s dying embers on a dimming grate

To nature’s somber sweetness after autumn’s robe is rent

I pen this poem as I linger at a phantom gate

To bid a fond farewell and wonder where, oh, where you went

(Ah yes, to hugs and kisses, too many to count, I know

To happiness because it was enough to be alive

To thankfulness to God from whom each season’s blessings flow

Through outstretched touch and taste and such, into Bygone’s archive)

© Janet Martin

And some precious last-day-of-November memories...

...and the world that had returned to green, gray and brown 

after Old Man Winter's mid November bumble, 

when he tumbled out of bed too soon,

will be a white winter wonderland come December!

Good-night and see you in December💖🙏