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The eleventh month of the year, like the 2nd, often gets a bad wrap. Oh, sure. There’s Thanksgiving, a wonderful celebration of food, family, football and fun. But as a venue for enjoying the out of doors, not so much. November is often dreary, overcast, lackluster and sparse. For those of a more pessimistic nature, it signals the beginning of long months clustered within our homes, the weather outside raging in fits and bursts, sometimes dangerously so with glacial ice covering every surface, frigid Arctic winds, seemingly endless snow and the constant shoveling, scraping and enduring it all entails. Come March we are weary, ready for spring.

But in November, if we look more closely, even this time of year offers a few snippets of beauty and wonder. I choose this latter course, cynics be damned!

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Serrated leaves of brethren black-cherry trees
wave to me outside our sunroom windows.
Empty wire-mesh feeders sway
in the muggy almost-autumn breeze.

Sluglike, I cross to the mailbox,
COVID-gloves in hand.
Wasted effort: Political flyers
for a candidate I’d never, ever vote for.

Didn’t I read somewhere
that September’s segue to fall
dictates longer sleeves,
cooler nights, solid shoes?

My sugar-self craves a hot cuppa chai
but not when The Weather Channel
tells me what I already know — we’re dying here
in this ninety-degree muck, reprieve not yet our due.

Predictably, others will soon
protest winter’s snowfall, her howling winds,
those frigid blasts of icy, northern air.

                       But I won’t…