Late November

Late November

It was a silent time of crushing dark.
The mornings mostly made of wasted hubris
And left-over bile from the previous month.
Her icy shoulders chilled the frosted quilt
I'd grown used to it.

For a decade I'd dreamed of a silent Spring
No March storms to herald a change in season
But a quiet transformation in a warming soil
It wouldn't take much, a few degrees
To make a happy garden.

I made her a hot meal each evening
A grunt of thanks or a scathing nothing.
She actually once told me the vegetables
Were wrongly arranged on her plate
And her handy hot meals stopped after that.

I stood high above Yarrow Valley
Looking down a dead-end road
Subsumed in the fog of a friend's bad death
Blanketed in the numbing chill
Of a long cold morning in late November.