Start November with this wise and meditative poem from Denton Loving.
—
Blue November
There’s no blue like the sky in the eleventh
month. The woods know this, bare arms
of beech, sycamore lifted to blue vault,
reaching for help from heaven. The wrens
know this as they hop, skitter across lawns,
under boxwood and juniper anchoring
flower beds, in and out of barn eaves.
The fox squirrel knows. He gathers acorns,
walnuts, the last hickories, surveys
his kingdom from throne of oak fence
post, weathered over decades, smooth
now as fossil memory. Almost
Thanksgiving. A single birdsfoot
violet blossoms in the pasture, hidden
in weeds, purple, born out of season,
waiting for the killing frost. Night comes.
The moon is low and round, full, the third
this autumn, which makes it a blue moon,
a harvest moon. It charges forward, a wild
horse whose reins you’ve dropped.
You don’t need to watch the squirrel
gather acorns. The same knowledge
inside him is inside you, recognizing
the blue moon by the angle it hangs.
There’s no blue like lonesomeness
when the wind blows cold on your bare
arms reaching for help from Heaven.
Moonlight, especially November’s
variety, is the falsest light.
***
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