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 pathTo sudden snow globe afternoons rekindling Christmas thrillTo fall and winter’s duels in the muted aftermathOf leaf song winnowed from woodlands now dark and stark and still To gleaming furrows turned and tucked like umber counterpanesTo harvest-hymn hiatus and to skies that steal the showTo echo-tangos tugging at heartstrings taut/fraught with refrainsOf love, laughter and longing’s ever learning to let go To winds that wander through a world of golden tapers snuffedTo squash and pumpkin lanterns gleaned and baked and steamed and friedTo brooding tableaus transformed by a big white duvet, fluffedUntil it spills soft feathers over town and countryside To joy, because of juncos, to the blue jays’ raucous criesTo winter’s feathered friends returned like long lost familyTo reveling in the raw agony of time’s demiseTo making the most of what all too soon is history To dear November’s dying embers on a dimming grateTo nature’s somber sweetness after autumn’s robe is rentI pen this poem as I linger at a phantom gateTo bid a fond farewell and wonder where, oh, where you went (Ah yes, to hugs and kisses, too many to count, I knowTo happiness because it was enough to be aliveTo thankfulness to God from whom each season’s blessings flowThrough 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💖🙏