It's been said before, but here and now, without fail, life feels different now compared to any other time of the year. Things get gray, and it somehow it makes me happier than before. I have wondered in the past if I am terribly morbid and tragic to crave this season so much. But I'm ok with it now. If I am tragic and morbid, something else balances me out. I have learned that I am not alone in this feeling....a lot of others love November too. (Do you?)
What is this anyway? A quieter time? Or (for me, at least) the internal rhythm of teaching beginning to make sense? Sometimes I think it's as simple as bracing winds coming to the door, and being awake enough to life to still step out into the world and greet it. In November, I wake up and settle down all at once. I also start reading poems by Robert Frost.
November is also the time of thoughtfully waiting. And making space.
In the midst of the business of life, I have lately been thinking about a lot of wandering things. Thoughts thought by C.S. Lewis. Thoughts of my family. Of my life as a teacher. Patterns all around me. Books and the things that are in them. What is comforting in the fall. The importance of making space. How good it feels to have a season change right in front of you. Why I like certain things and not others. I feel unfettered and I can't tell if that is making me feel good or mostly alarmed inside. Unfettered means 'to release from restraint or inhibition'. (Hmm.)
Longfellow writes about these set apart times for individual people. He calls them secret anniversaries of the heart.
The holiest of all holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart,
When the full river of feeling overflows;—
I think this is called my heart in November. So, in honor of the rekindled admiration for Robert Frost, some poems.
Fragmentary Blue
Why make so much of fragmentary blue
In here and there a bird, or butterfly,
Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,
When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?
Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as yet)--
Though some savants make earth include the sky;
And blue so far above us comes so high,
It only gives our wish for blue a whet.
In here and there a bird, or butterfly,
Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,
When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?
Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as yet)--
Though some savants make earth include the sky;
And blue so far above us comes so high,
It only gives our wish for blue a whet.
Iota Subscript
Seek not in me the bit I capital,
Not yet the little dotted in me seek.
If I have in me any I at all,
'Tis the iota subscript of the Greek.
So small an I as an attention beggar.
The letter you will find me subscript to
Is neither alpha, eta, nor omega,
But upsilon which is the Greek for you.
Not yet the little dotted in me seek.
If I have in me any I at all,
'Tis the iota subscript of the Greek.
So small an I as an attention beggar.
The letter you will find me subscript to
Is neither alpha, eta, nor omega,
But upsilon which is the Greek for you.
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
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