November’s Lip.  

Hanging with one hand free
from November’s bottom lip,
the skies are beat-up grey every day.
Fallen fall spills white guts everywhere.
The rabbits go bleach;
the mama deer run for their lives.
November’s eyebrow is a dead branch.
We spend this month
gearing up for December.
We crush our faces against the storefronts,
bake those sugarbells,
and pull out the charity one more time,
before we change our minds.
But before that,
November has some business with us.
We honour the frozen soldiers
- the glorious dead -
with crimson poppies.
Those poppies smell like guilt,
they taste poor and forgotten,
they cost as much as we can spare,
and they come
with a needle.
November has some business with us.
It is our business
To keep snow from the graves.

© 2006 Mike Gravel