The Way the Leaves Keep Falling, poem by Linda Pastan

THE WAY THE LEAVES KEEP FALLING
by Linda Pastan

It is November
and morning — time to get to work.
I feel the little whip
of my conscience flick
as I stand at the window watching
the great harvest of leaves.
Across the street my neighbor,
his leaf blower already roaring,
tries to make order
from the chaos of fading color.
He seems brave and a bit foolish.
It is almost tidal, the way
the leaves keep falling
wave after wave to earth.

In Eden there were
no seasons, and sometimes
I think it was the tidiness
of that garden
Eve hated, all the wooden tags
with the new names of plants and trees.
Still, I am Adam’s child too
and I like order, though
the margins of my poems
are ragged, and I stand here
all morning watching the leaves.

Credit: “The Way the Leaves Keep Falling” appears in Linda Pastan‘s collection Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968-1998 (W.W. Norton & Co., 1999). Find the book at Amazon.com.

Photo: “Falling red maple leaves, Boone County, Missouri” From the postcard book: Sierra Club Nature in Close-Up. ©Gay Bumgarner,1988, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Contact the photographer at her website gaybumgarner.com. Find the 160-page book at Amazon here.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Linda Pastan has published at least 12 books of poetry and a number of essays. Her awards include the Dylan Thomas Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award (Poetry Society of America), the Bess Hokin Prize (Poetry Magazine), the 1986 Maurice English Poetry Award (for A Fraction of Darkness), the Charity Randall Citation of the International Poetry Forum, and the 2003 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Two of her collections of poems were nominated for the National Book Award and one for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. From 1991–1995 she was Poet Laureate of Maryland. (Read more at wikipedia.org.)

In November, poem by Lisel Mueller

IN NOVEMBER
By Lisel Mueller

Outside the house the wind is howling
and the trees are creaking horribly.
This is an old story
with its old beginning,
as I lay me down to sleep.
But when I wake up, sunlight
has taken over the room.
You have already made the coffee
and the radio brings us music
from a confident age. In the paper
bad news is set in distant places.
Whatever was bound to happen
in my story did not happen.
But I know there are rules that cannot be broken.
Perhaps a name was changed.
A small mistake. Perhaps
a woman I do not know
is facing the day with the heavy heart
that, by all rights, should have been mine.

PHOTO: “Autumn Trees” by Bert Kaufman.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Lisel Mueller was born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1924 and immigrated to America at the age of 15. She graduated from the University of Evansville (Indiana) in 1944 and has taught at the University of Chicago, Elmhurst College in Illinois, and Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont. Mueller currently resides in a retirement community in Chicago. (Read more at wikipedia.org.)

 

Solitude Late at Night in the Woods, poem by Robert Bly

SOLITUDE LATE AT NIGHT IN THE WOODS
by Robert Bly

The body is like a November birch facing the full moon
And reaching into the cold heavens.
In these trees there is no ambition, no sodden body, no leaves,
Nothing but bare trunks climbing like cold fire!
 
My last walk in the trees has come.  At dawn
I must return to the trapped fields,
To the obedient earth.
The trees shall be reaching all the winter.
 
It is a joy to walk in the bare woods.
The moonlight is not broken by the heavy leaves.
The leaves are down, and touching the soaked earth,
Giving off the odor that partridges love.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Robert Bly (born1926) is an American poet, author, activist and leader of the mythopoetic men’s movement. His most commercially successful book to date was Iron John: A Book About Men (1990), a key text of the mythopoetic men’s movement, which spent 62 weeks on the The New York Times Best Seller list. He won the 1968National Book Award for Poetry for his book The Light Around the Body. (Read more at wikipedia.org.)

PHOTO: “Full moon rising through birch tree forest” by Paul Pluskwik, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Foggy November, poem by Dale Sprowl

FOGGY NOVEMBER
Poem by Dale Sprowl                                                           

Mystic fog clung to air like film over eyes.
Unlike the usual silver tidal wave that strikes the coast,
it made the world invisible except for headlights and streetlamps
which created dusty pyramids reflecting nothingness.
 
The mist hung such that magical reality leapt to life—
a view of world one step back.
 
Sometimes veil of mist and shadow slows us,
and darkness, the uncertainty, reveals light.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Dale Sprowl teaches writing at Biola University in La Mirada, California. During summers, she administrates and teaches at the Young Writer’s Project at UCI. Her work with the UCI Writing Project began in 1981, and she has contributed to the UCIWP texts on the teaching of writing. Her first chapbook of poems, The Colors of Water, published by Finishing Line Press in 2007, and her second chapbook, Moon Over Continent’s Edge (2009) have been nominated for a California Book Award. Her poems have also appeared in PEARL, Fire, A New Song, Ancient Paths, and Knowing Stones: Poems of Exotic Places.

“Foggy November” by Dale Sprowl appears in the Silver Birch Press Silver Anthology — available in a Kindle version at Amazon.com. The book,  which features the work of 62 authors from the U.S. and U.K., is also available in paperback.

November haiku by Jack Kerouac

NOVEMBER HAIKU
by Jack Kerouac

Leaves falling everywhere
in the November
Midnight moonshine

PHOTO: “Autumn leaves in the moonlight” by Ray Christie, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

In November, children’s book by Cynthia Rylant and Jill Kastner

In November, the earth is growing quiet. It is making

its bed, a winter bed for flowers and small creatures.

The bed is white and silent, and much life can hide

beneath its blankets.

…Excerpt from In November, a children’s picture book by Cynthia Rylantand Jill Kastner

This charming book — filled with beautiful illustrations — would make a wonderful Thanksgiving gift for a 4-6-year-old. Find it at Amazon.com.

In November, Children’s Book by Cynthia Rylant and Jill Kastner

In November, the earth is growing quiet. It is making

its bed, a winter bed for flowers and small creatures.

The bed is white and silent, and much life can hide

beneath its blankets.

Excerpt from In November, a children’s picture book by Cynthia Rylant and Jill Kastner

This charming book — filled with beautiful illustrations — would make a wonderful Thanksgiving gift for a 4-6-year-old. Find it at Amazon.com.

November Musings by Emily Dickinson

November, Poem by Elizabeth Coatsworth

NOVEMBER

Poem by Elizabeth Coatsworth

November comes
And November goes,
With the last red berries
And the first white snows.

With night coming early,
And dawn coming late,
And ice in the bucket
And frost by the gate.

The fires burn
And the kettles sing,
And earth sinks to rest
Until next spring.

Photo: “Curios” by Tomas Castelazo