Donald Hall, from SEASONS AT EAGLE POND, on the many pleasures and comforts this month brings for those of us who love to hibernate:
"Some of us...are darkness-lovers. We do not dislike the early and late daylight of June, whippoorwill's graytime, but we cherish the gradually increasing dark of November, which we wrap around ourselves in the prosperous warmth of woodstove, oil, electric blanket, storm window, and insulation. We are partly tuber, partly bear. Inside our warmth we fold ourselves in the dark and its cold - around us, outside us, safely away from us; we tuck ourselves up in the long sleep and comfort of cold's opposite, warming ourselves by thought of the cold, lighting ourselves by darkness's idea. Or we are Persephone gone underground again, cozy in the amenities of Hell. Sheltered between stove and electric light, we hollow islands of safety within the cold and dark."
And John Updike, from A CHILD'S CALENDAR, on the essential, elemental beauty of late autumn:
The ground is hard,
As hard as stone.
The year is old,
The birds are flown.
And yet the world,
Nevertheless,
Displays a certain
Loveliness----
The beauty of
The bone. Tall God
Must see our souls
This way, and nod.
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