New day. New month. New theme. Our poet Martin Newell pens a magical evocation of November. What a beautiful poem. Day 698 of the Daily Poems.
Old November
The sunlight shimmies slowly
Through chiffon layers of mist
As warmth comes late in morning
Which the frost will not resist
And even under evergreens
In icing sugar woods
It spears the steamy clearings
For November, too, has goods
And the best of these are berries
Now leaves are nearly gone
Like the jewellery of summer
Clinging resolutely on
In the amber pyracanthus
And the holly, red as blood
A ten-green-bottle background
For paths now mired in mud
Where women walking Westies
Hear the cloth-cap gaffers say
That the winter will be harsher
As it had been in their day
And the breath of central heating
Will exhale in the alleys
And the smoke of huddled houses
Is the signal from the valleys
When the sunset settles early
On the rosegold afternoon
While trees jab spiny fingers
At the milkman in the moon
The curtains drawn by teatime
And the chestnuts in the embers
For these are all the chattels
And the goods of old Novembers
Martin Newell
previously published in the Sunday Express