My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walked the sodden pasture lane.
Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She’s glad the birds are gone away,
She’s glad her simple worsted gray
Is silver now with clinging mist.
The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.
Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.
Robert Frost, My November Guest
The first of November has come softly to Humptulips County, creeping in on a dense early morning fog that has hidden the pallid results of an as-yet anemic autumn. There hasn’t been much fall color this year. The days stayed too warm for too long and, when the season’s tipping point was finally reached, their warmth gave way quickly to sodden gales – gales which did their best to strip the trees bare before they could brighten the heart as they burned. But this October failed to do a credible job, and there are still trees with green leaves aplenty. Perhaps bits of brighter color may yet come; my heart awaits, if so.
The fog is an old friend in these parts and its return is always welcome. Fog is an appropriate calling card for November: it lends an air of gossamer sobriety to the view from my library windows; it reminds me both of pleasant memories and of the possibilities remaining to the future, and invites me to partake plenteously of each.
