November

November
by Ron Moran

Not the month to give our thanks;
it is
the undertaker for our year’s losses,
as in
the sickbays of our public schools;
it is
the month when old and poor dread
the day

their utility companies send a 30 day
notice
to pay up now or your service will be
interrupted.
That is the word they use; and retailers
are
in a another state of panic, scrambling
as heretofore

not witnessed, some offering to give
away
the store, or worse, their lives during
this season,
different from others as the media often
crows.
Meanwhile the unemployment rate
reaches

a 27 year high this November, while
in mid-Florida,
this guy who lost his job as an engineer
owes 90K
and now makes 30K at a sandwich shop,
so he shoots
six people, killing one, and Jesus, I ask,
What good

does that do anyone, I mean, killing
like that?
Here and there, an off-year election
brings,
maybe, up to 10 percent to the polls,
if the day
is as clear and hard as bedrock, but not
on one

cool and rainy, blamed by the media
as the
forerunner of the next flu strain. So be it.
I like November
anyway, the afterglow of October sunsets
lingering
like the last, congenial guest to leave
before

the lights turn off, and not only because
of Thanksgiving;
and, hey, the truth of how the pilgrims
named
Thanksgiving would have, yes, caused
any
President to reconsider the holiday,
at least

renaming it, if he could, but, whoa,
when
a tradition is lionized, few ask and fewer
know.
All given, we dress for the weather,
trying
to steel our hearts, whatever comes
our way.

Author’s comment: This ironic poem is a sort of litany of reasons why in November, perhaps, we ought not to give “thanks, “as in “Thanksgiving,” since, among other things, November is the month when the year is dying, when sickness reaches one of its peaks in public schools, when, often, the swell of buying for the season’s holidays is only somewhat higher than an average wave, and the like; but, still, the speaker finds beauty in the month, and well, we all do what we can do, what we have to do, whatever the day, month, year.