Lunar Paraphrase 

by Wallace Stevens

The moon is the mother of pathos and pity.

When, at the wearier end of November,
Her old light moves along the branches,
Feebly, slowly, depending upon them;
When the body of Jesus hangs in a pallor,
Humanly near, and the figure of Mary,
Touched on by hoar-frost, shrinks in a shelter
Made by the leaves, that have rotted and fallen;
When over the houses, a golden illusion
Brings back an earlier season of quiet
And quieting dreams in the sleepers in darkness-

The moon is the mother of pathos and pity.

In walks winter

Approach of Winter
by William Carlos Williams
The half-stripped trees struck by a wind together, bending all, the leaves flutter drily and refuse to let go or driven like hail stream bitterly out to one side and fall where the salvias, hard carmine,— like no leaf that ever was— edge the bare garden.

Heedless grace

A November Sunrise

by Anne Porter

Wild geese are flocking and calling in pure golden air,
Glory like that which painters long ago
Spread as a background for some little hermit
Beside his cave, giving his cloak away,
Or for some martyr stretching out
On her expected rack.
A few black cedars grow nearby
And there's a donkey grazing.

Small craftsmen, steeped in anonymity like bees,
Gilded their wooden panels, leaving fame to chance,
Like the maker of this wing-flooded golden sky,
Who forgives all our ignorance
Both of his nature and of his very name,
Freely accepting our one heedless glance.

Now!

This Shining Moment in the Now

by David Budbill

When I work outdoors all day, every day, as I do now, in the fall,
getting ready for winter, tearing up the garden, digging potatoes,
gathering the squash, cutting firewood, making kindling, repairing
bridges over the brook, clearing trails in the woods, doing the last of
the fall mowing, pruning apple trees, taking down the screens,
putting up the storm windows, banking the house—all these things,
as preparation for the coming cold...

when I am every day all day all body and no mind, when I am
physically, wholly and completely, in this world with the birds,
the deer, the sky, the wind, the trees...

when day after day I think of nothing but what the next chore is,
when I go from clearing woods roads, to sharpening a chain saw,
to changing the oil in a mower, to stacking wood, when I am
all body and no mind...

when I am only here and now and nowhere else—then, and only
then, do I see the crippling power of mind, the curse of thought,
and I pause and wonder why I so seldom find
this shining moment in the now.

Knitting and the writer

Covers

by Kathryn Cowles

I learn to knit so I can knit covers for things, easy things at first covers for my hands covers for my feet for my head and neck soon I am making covers for friends as well I am adept at covering I cover handles on doors I cover the tops of pots, themselves covers, covered with knit yarn, I cover things for my daughter, small things, I make a cover for her eye and a cover for the eye of her doll I make a cover for her doll covering the whole thing except for the eye, for which I have already made a cover, I cover her dollhouse in great patches I connect the patches I am on a roll, I learn to knit in my sleep with the aid of a sleep knitting machine I cover my bed over and over again at night I become more and more adept until I can knit covers for myself as I walk, slow business to be sure but faster and faster for I find I need always to be covered everywhere I go so I knit the cover and trail it behind me to cover where I've been. 

Choosing ice and fire

Opal by Amy Lowell You are ice and fire,  The touch of you burns my hands like snow.  You are cold and flame.  You are the crimson of amaryllis,  The silver of moon-touched magnolias.  When I am with you,  My heart is a frozen pond  Gleaming with agitated torches.

Put the needle on the record

Ode to the Vinyl Record

by Thomas R. Smith

The needle lowers into the groove
and I'm home. It could be any record
I've lived with and loved a long time: Springsteen
or Rodrigo, Ray Charles or Emmylou
Harris: Not only the music, but
the whirlpool shimmering on the turntable
funneling blackly down into the ocean
of the ear—even the background
pops and hisses a worn record
wraps the music in, creaturely
imperfections so hospitable to our own.
Since those first Beatles and Stones LPs
plopped down spindles on record players
we opened like tiny suitcases at sweaty
junior high parties while parents were out,
how many nights I've pulled around
my desires a vinyl record's cloak
of flaws and found it a perfect fit,
the crackling unclarity and turbulence
of the country's lo-fi basement heart
madly spinning, making its big dark sound.

After the falling

The Fall Almost Nobody Sees

by David Budbill

Everybody's gone away.
They think there's nothing left to see.
The garish colors' flashy show is over.
Now those of us who stay
hunker down in sweet silence,
blessed emptiness among

red-orange shadblow
purple-red blueberry
copper-brown beech
gold tamarack, a few
remaining pale yellow
popple leaves,
sedge and fern in shades
from beige to darkening red
to brown to almost black,
and all this in front of, below,
among blue-green spruce and fir
and white pine,

all of it under gray skies,
chill air, all of us waiting
in the somber dank and rain,
waiting here in quiet, chill
November,
waiting for the snow.

November Night by Adelaide Crapsey Listen. . . With faint dry sound, Like steps of passing ghosts, The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees And fall.