November's Lament

This is a poem I wrote in response to my brother-in-law's poem about October's delight.

November's Lament

I sit in my study

fretting about what has not been done

to button up for winter.

The gardens are helter skelter

with summer's remains and autumn's detritous

blown about and leaden wet.

The peony's tall stalks are bowed

weeping with the cold,

no longer beautiful.

The garlic and basil and tomatoes and peppers

have been harvested;

turned into simmering dinners

but the beets remain in ground,

awaiting the perfect recipe,

the autumn soup that will do the earthy flavor justice

and maintain the harvest's reddish purple

of its bulbous root.

The flower bed is dead,

nothing clipped in ready for the

deepening cold.

No new bulbs to surprise

the onlooker in spring.

It is November and all I can think about

is Thanksgiving

and scraping frost from the windshield

and shoveling the driveway.

11 November 2008