Dark November

It’s almost the end of November, it’s Friday night, and it’s dark. November has always been to my mind the dark month. It doesn’t make a lot of sense really, since the days continue to get shorter right up until the solstice in December, but it has always seemed darker, so there it is, November, the dark month (even if this year’s November has been mostly bright and mild here).

Years ago, decades actually, I had a very capable Grade 10 student who had the idea that November should be designated as the suicide month; in fact, one of her suggestions, if I remember correctly, was that the small dark town we lived in then should have suicide facilities open in November for interested candidates, just to make it easier for everyone. She didn’t stick with her dark obsession, but the notion of dark November is a powerful one and I can’t ever step into the month without thinking of her.

Robert Creeley put the darkness there, right in the middle of this poem:

I Know a Man

As I sd to my
friend, because I am
always talking, -- John, I

sd, which was not his
name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what

can we do against
it, or else, shall we &
why not, buy a goddamn big car,

drive, he sd, for
christ's sake, look
out where yr going.

An old friend once suggested what we can “do against/it”. He told us, It’s November, finally you can see! And he was right -- the overpowering green of the leaves is gone, the sun is lower in the sky, there’s no snow to reflect what light there is, and you can see what is there. Yesterday at the Frog Pond we walked around and over still grey boulders, the bright rust of pine needles strewn everywhere, and the even more brilliant green of the damp moss that covered all of the shaded surfaces. When we came out by the pond the water shone silvery grey around reflections of pines and the dark shapes of mallard ducks near the shore. It was November and you could see.

But now it’s dark, (in the US it's Black Friday, which has somehow become more important than the giving of American thanks) and that darkness starts to fall long before the invisible sun drops away. It is the dark days, days of low cloud, drizzle, rain, fog, black tree branches against grey skies. It’s late November. And the days will keep on getting shorter before the earth starts to tilt back towards a brighter time.