I have a particular reason for appreciating November: It's my birthday month. According to my mother I was supposed to be an October baby but I hung in there an extra month. In a fun twist of fate that meant I ended up being born on Election Day, and then when I was elected for the first time to the Idaho state legislature it was on my birthday. Quite a big present from the voters of Kootenai County, Idaho!
November has come to mean more to me beyond my birthday and Election Day, in particular becoming the birthday month for my first baby, Eldest Daughter.
As the poems below describe, for all of us in the Northern Hemisphere it's the month when days really feel shorter, sun really rises later, autumn really does turn around and hand us into the cold arms of the waiting winter.
"Monday" by Cindy Gregg
On this first day of November
it is cold as a cave,
the sky the color
of neutral third parties.
"Why You Should Go Outside at 4:40 am in November" by Rosemary Royston
Because it is more silent than you can imagine
and above you the moon is a nickel
glinting from the unseen sun,
surrounded by broken crystals.
"November for Beginners" by Rita Dove
(Bonus for me: The site where I found this posted it on my birthday)
Snow would be the easy
way out—that softening
sky like a sigh of relief
at finally being allowed
to yield. No dice.
"The Crazy Woman" by Gwendolyn Brooks
I shall not sing a May song.
A May song should be gay.
I'll wait until November
And sing a song of gray.
"Like Coins, November" by Elizabeth Klise Von Zerneck
We drove past late fall fields as flat and cold
as sheets of tin and, in the distance, trees
were tossed like coins against the sky. Stunned gold
and bronze, oaks, maples stood in twos and threes:
some copper bright, a few dull brown and, now
and then, the shock of one so steeled with frost
it glittered like a dime.
"November" by Maggie Dietz
Field mice hit the barns, big squirrels gorge
On busted chestnuts. A sky like hardened plaster
Hovers. The pasty river, its next of kin,
Coughs up reed grass fat as feather dusters.
"November" by Ben Howard
These last warm days are telling a funny story
whose punchline never comes. You could put your hand
on the iron railing of your neighbor's steps
and feel, in its frigid core, the steadiness
of winter.
"November" by Lucien Stark
First frost, the blue spruce
against my window's shagged,
and the sky is sombering. I
draw close to the fire, inward
with all that breathes.
"November" by Jay du Von
And the earth was heavy, the roads
soft with yellow mud and lined with coming
and going. Always the days were shorter
and now the evening came far on the road
to meet us.
