The deep, dark beauty of November

This is one of my all time favorite poems. It is by Paul Smithers of Cottontown, TN. I found it in Yankee magazine when I was a teenager.

GOING DUST

This is mine, this calm and modest twilight

When night begins early to filter

between

The flaps of gray sky and the

evergreen

Mocks the maple. The kaleidoscope

plight

Of leaves, the cold end of summer

roses, blight

On the garden that comes in the

unseen

Hours of frost to others, these things may mean

Sorrow; to me they are joy and joy

outright.

I hope to die in such young November

As this and be laid to rest under just

Such a sky, to finally peacefully lie

In the scent of apples that will

remember

How I gazed on them once, when

going dust

Was a dream that living could not

mortify.