Leaving for work in November

Whether you love your work or not, it can be hard to get started some days. And never more than during the dimmer  months of the year. I can only conclude that that’s why God made coffee.

Leaving for work in November

Not yet dawn, but already geese racket
on the river, marshaling their convoys
for the next stage south.

The leaves are all down, but for a few
bright tatters that will emerge in sunrise
like an empty street after Mardi Gras.

Homeless deer nose through the leavings
of the apple tree while my coffee brews
and the news honks away on the radio.

After the curtain falls on fall and before
it rises on winter is too long
an intermission, November.

The house lights come up in gray sky
over brown ground slick with rain.
I blink the world back into focus.

The geese all rise at once, loud and full
of purpose, up the aisles of air, guided
by some lodestone in the brain.

I keep to my seat, thinking,
one more cup of coffee, one more,
and then I’ll go.

Tags: listeningpost, poetry