November, you are the urn of the seasons,
All other months are ash inside you–
Body without light, spirit-haunted.
Our waking hours
Resemble more a rainy dream,
Our dreaming, the mist of another life.
I hear an oboe in November,
An oboe drifting through the woods,
Accompanied by strings.
Are not those cellos and violins
Our desires dying even as they desire more life?
From the river a freighter’s foghorn
Throbs in the night.
The rumbling of a distant train
Beats drum rolls for the dead of November.
I dream them in gray.
Along the river’s mist I see the dead,
And then I see her
Who was once naked beside me.
How ashen her beautiful face,
How dead those eyes I knew.
She holds out a cold hand.
I step through to the other side.
Salvatore Ala 