Phibby Venable

It is quiet here and you arrive suspended
between the vacancies of leaves and a first snow.
Through a perspective of gray mornings I rise
to walk your trails thickened by the drowze of color.
Weary November, I wear a gray coat and settle
into the frosty silence and sense of waiting.
The snowbirds drape themselves and shiver
like sentinels along the high wired poles.

This time, November, I will love you.
I will lean into your blues and gray to stroke
the small sun you have hidden in fog.
I will drift your leaf sponged lanes and sit
to watch the river release the last
of the wild geese southward.
We will comfort each other with wood smoke
and settle this silence between us.

The speckled rocks and dark water
will blend our seams and salvage us with time.
Your great gray light will shine.