Ode to November
— Anna B. Sutton
It’s getting cold and everyone around me
is mourning summer’s end, but I know
better. Summers in the south are stretching
their legs into April and October. They are
taking up space like a man on a train
or on a bus or on an airplane or in your bed.
Give me the rusted hinge of fall, the gray
blanket of winter. Give me a season that feels
lived in, like a pilled sweater, like a woman’s
soft abdomen. For months, we wilted in the heat.
We kept our air conditioners on high, the hallowed
spaces of our homes cool and dark
like a winter morning. Open your windows,
watch your breath rise into the trees
like an offering. It’s here, now—the cavern, a womb
appears quiet but is full of life. Have you
ever welcomed touch more than on a cold day?
Have you heard the sublime quiet of snow?
What will be lost to whole generations
lays in front of you like a banquet. How foolish
not to hold each ice-trimmed morning like a prayer.