I Thought It Was National Heavy Handed Overwritten Bad Prose Poem Month?!

November has taken hold with a seriousness announced by a rewinding of clocks, and frantic lighting of furnaces. We waved off summer a lingering guest, back and forth from shirtsleeves to woolens, but it was not meant to be. Tidy the guest room, air the linen, await the new arrival. The summer's garden plants, reduced to roots beneath a polystyrene dunce hat drink the damp and wait, only to be exposed by a rude thief's quick fingers on a seven dollar item, leaving behind the fabric cloche strewn in a waterlogged heap at the doorstep, some dark cackling gesture of generosity.

 

Perhaps it was the lure of a secret, disguised beneath that proved so seductive? The vexed lavender declaring, "Then look, and be on your way!" November commences with ritual, the casting and counting, stripping the pretense, showing us, defects and cursed ambition. A poppy displayed "Lest we Forget", though long forgotten that which we're charged to remember. "Look, and be on your way", and replace the fleece faux woolens of  Exceptionalism as November settles for a season of latency, fat with fowl and pumpkin pie to sustain us. Our origin myth, one shared meal bleeds to a Manifest Destiny death warrant. Pass the cranberries, please.

Preserved, by brandy and brine, the first frost's grapes reduced to sugar, cabbages soured and submerged with exigency,  juniper baubles dangling throughout, the festive bath bombs of the Christmas cabbage. Vibrant red, universal warning, stop, stop, but deaf and tearing across the drought dead landscape burning through whatever chance has settled in the path. We plan, we preserve, we store, we ignore the elephant, and praise the cabbage. November, you have a lot of nerve.

Time wound back, I met the extra hour with conceit. The things to be accomplished as the first bits of morning crack over the river, discouraged before the first cup of tea falls down my throat. There will be no novel, novella even, not a sock washed, nor a soup set to simmer. Switch on the radio, drink a second cup of tea, wonder at the weather. 

Someone I don't quite know whispers naive optimism, an attempt to be awed by the staying power of potatoes in a cool, dark, cellar. I shall endure as a potato then; cold, beset and devoured by blight and worms. Watch this space, watch for the November emergence dressed in aluminum, expertly presented to the chants of "Gunpowder, treason, and plot." This I do not remember either, someone else's treason. We have our own in abundance. 

My potatoes of late autumn will stagger through to spring perhaps. Potatoes proffer no guarantees as sustenance or bad metaphor. 

 

"Is all quite right then?" 

"Why should it be not?"

Politesse of weather, cabbages, and potatoes. Someone asks after the lavender, still beneath the (replacement) winter cone and cloches. Wait and see, that dull refrain offered in routine exchanges. Have you plans for the holidays? I'm instructed to merriment. Awkward reminders to ask if assistance is required. I'd better be moving along now. Lovely to see you. Send my best to your mother. 

November blows a gale through the calendar, shakes the single glazed windows that never quite fit the frames, dares emergence into the wind and grit, leaves and ash, the gutting grey and copper cold light that makes me cry. Go forth potato, teased by bonfire warmth. As the kids say, "Go big or go home."

 

*I will probably delete this in the morning