Flowers For Socrates

by NONA BLYTH CLOUD

November. Depending on where you live, it’s still autumn, or already winter, or spring-into-summer if you’re south of the equator. Here in America, we’re going off Daylight Savings Time this weekend, and it will get dark by five o’clock in the afternoon again.

November is a time of transition no matter where you live. So I’ve rounded up some poets with very different views of the month to take us into the change.

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Emily Dickinson spent her whole life on the edge of things, in a very small corner of the world, but she was a peerless observer of every shift and variation around her.

Nature, Poem 49: November

By Emily Dickinson

Besides the autumn poets sing,
A few prosaic days
A little this side of the snow
And that side of the haze.

A few incisive mornings,
A few ascetic eyes, —
Gone Mr. Bryant’s golden-rod,
And Mr. Thomson’s sheaves.

Still is the bustle in the brook,
Sealed are the spicy valves;
Mesmeric fingers softly touch
The eyes of many elves.

Perhaps a squirrel may remain,
My sentiments to share.
Grant me, O Lord, a sunny mind,
Thy windy will to bear!

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) – one of America’s greatest and most original poets. Her works was almost completely unpublished during her reclusive life in Amherst MA, but many volumes of her poems have been in print in the decades since.

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