November Farewells: Cybrill’s Sweaters and Stoddard’s Autumn Reign

November 13, 2019

On this day, the first whispers of November thread their way through the garden.

The air is cool enough to taste, each breath edged with wood smoke and memory.

The trees, those bold courtiers of autumn, stand half-undressed now, their summer finery scattered like confetti at their feet.

The garden grows quieter, not dead but dreaming—its pulse drawing inward, its song humming below the soil.

"When the bold branches

Bid farewell to rainbow leaves -
Welcome wool sweaters."

– B. Cybrill

B. Cybrill’s small verse is as crisp as a November morning. In only a handful of words, the poet captures the hush between seasons—the sweet resignation of nature’s retreat and our gentle acceptance of it.

The trees are brave, standing bare against the wind, and we, too, wrap ourselves in warmth, readying hearts and hands for quieter labors.

It is the gardener’s lullaby: the bright mirth of color giving way to the comfort of wool, tea, and rest.

But November, as poet Richard Henry Stoddard reminds us, is not all serenity and reflection.

She has a tragic dignity, cloaked in rain, wearing her loneliness like a weathered crown.

The wild November come at last
Beneath a veil of rain;
The night wind blows its folds aside -
Her face is full of pain.

The latest of her race, she takes
The Autumn's vacant throne:
She has but one short moon to live,
And she must live alone.

A barren realm of withered fields,
Bleak woods, and falling leaves,
The palest morns that ever dawned;
The dreariest of eves.

It is no wonder that she comes,
Poor month! With tears of pain;
For what can one so hopeless do
But weep, and weep again?

– Richard Henry Stoddard, November

What Stoddard paints so movingly is not despair but deep empathy—for the land, for time, for the lost richness slipping into dormancy.

November is the gardener’s test of faith. We peer into a landscape of retreat and trust that the hidden workings continue. Beneath those barren fields and skeletal boughs, a quiet industry persists.

Roots knit together, bulbs dream, and life—invisible, inexhaustible—waits for its cue.

To love a garden in November is to love it unadorned. It is to admire the brave geometry of the branches against a slate-grey sky, to see beauty in the humility of decay.

There is grace in this restraint, elegance in this pause. And if the month seems to weep, perhaps she weeps for us—because we so seldom slow down enough to match her solemn majesty.

So let us meet her not with sorrow, but with reverence. Brew something fragrant, pull on the softest sweater, and walk among the empty beds.

There is poetry here, if one only listens—the music of endings preparing for beginnings yet unseen.