It has arrived. The dark of this Wednesday, the last of November. Most of the previous 29 days masqueraded as Indian summer;  the chorus of fall rising in a parched crescendo at month’s end. Monday morning’s buffet brunch of chill, hue, and aroma roused my senses from their dull preoccupation. It is November. My sudden realization startled me. It is November. Only, now it is ending.

Monday, November 28
Today felt like November. Alas. Earth, the hues of toast: beige, light brown, brown, and burnt. With veins of black and gotcha! flecks of weathered gold and crisped warm red. The election brouhaha is over. Yet not. Thanksgiving Day came quietly, kissed our lips and stuffed our bellies.

And now there’s this quiet bit of time. A drizzly rain, glistening beneath daylight shrouded above in fields of variegated grey. The bokeh lights, dark green trees, and red velvet ribbons are going up. I’m trying not to look. Any day now, the calendar will announce December! and 25 days will warp speed us through parties, preparations, and too much to do.

Until.

Silence.

New Year’s dawns, whispering, coaxing us–again overstuffed–back into rest. Until it rolls the carpet out and welcomes 2017. And, then, again it starts. Month by month by month.

And there goes a life.

Year by year by year.

Tuesday, November 29
With such grace, joy, vibrancy, nature births itself. She frolics in the youth of her summer. And then embraces her aging with no regrets. Willingly, she throws goodbye kisses that wither, crisp, and fall in a terra firma union. Dying without struggle. A long winter’s sleep. Hibernating beneath earth’s blanket, fermenting, mulching, and returning, eventually, for another life. Another year.

It is two days from December, but, for me, only the second day of November. Fall spit and sputtered. Dry, and reluctant to bear forth colour and cool. Perhaps human events, the election turmoil, clouded my thoughts, yanking me from the present and presence of nature’s evolution around me.