November, it’s November, November, oh November.

I am waiting on a letter. I am not sure if the letter will come true. I am leaving things I have yet to leave. I can still sense the wishes by the dark water. I can still touch the sleeplessness from hundreds of days ago. Has it only been several thousand hours? Oh heart. Foolish unto ever.

It’s going to be a hard winter.
Look through the almanac, look
at the coat of the caterpillar,
look in the window-well where
the cat has stockpiled mice—
field mice, a half-dozen of them,
mingled with the poplar leaves.

Where you look, the portents
bear the same burden: the lawns
will mold under the deep drifts,
the greens will thirst to death
in their dry dirt—are brown
already with a chill foresight;
look at the puffy, bundled spruce.

Look at the words of your love,
inside the envelope look,
read, believe in the weathers
she promises. If your cheeks
burn, it is not the heart’s fever
but excoriations of early snow:
the hard winter it’s going to be.

Robley Wilson, Poetry, October 1981