Crows fly southwest in
a very long straggling flock.
We see neither end.
November twilight,
clear white light seen through the woods,
the leaves being gone.
November 2, 1853
The rustling oak leaves,
a ripple on the river --
cool northerly wind.
The jays with their scream
at home in the scenery.
A raw gusty day.
It is worth the while
to walk in swamps now, to bathe
your eyes with greenness.
Remarkable how
little we attend to what
passes before us.
The notes of small birds
like a nail on an anvil
in now leafless woods.
Nature perseveres.
Though she works slowly she has
much time to work in.
There is a season
when pine leaves are yellow and
then they are fallen.
Grand natural features
waving woods and huge boulders
are not on the map.
Smooth shallow water
in the shelter of the wood
awaiting the ice.
A narrow white cloud
resting on every mountain
on the horizon.
November 12, 1852
Little birds peck at
white birch catkins and fly off
with a jingling sound.
October light fades
into the clear white leafless
November twilight.
I see a lichen
on a rock in a meadow,
a perfect circle.
The jay on alert,
mimicking each woodland note.
What happened? Who's dead?
The manifold ways
that light at this season is
reflected to us.
Rejoice at sundown,
at the hooting of an owl,
this world where owls live.
These nuts not gathered.
One who used to get them has
committed suicide.
November 19, 1858
We see a partridge
on the ground under an oak,
looking like a snag.
 |
| November 21, 2016 |
We are made to love
the pond and meadow as wind
to ripple water.
November's bare bleak
inaccessible beauty
seen through a clear air.
The new-fallen snow
seen lying just as it fell
on the twigs and leaves.
This sugaring of
snow reveals a cow-path in
the distant landscape.
The unexpected
exhilarating yellow
light of November.
Faint creak of a limb
heard in this oak wood is the
note of a nuthatch.
I detect it much
nearer than I suspected,
its mate not far off.
The bare, barren earth
cheerless without ice and snow.
But how bright the stars.
Twilight makes so large
a part of the afternoon
these November days.
Snow buntings rise from
the midst of a stubble-field
unexpectedly.
November 29, 1859
Sparkling windows and
vanes of the village now seen
against the mountains.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau"A book, each page written in its own season,out-of-doors, in its own locality.”
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2020
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