(Note: I also posted this on Substack as well.)

Welp, had another little burst of poetic inspiration (Thanks, Zen In the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury), this time from going out to clean my car of snow (yes, in April) and getting buffeted by wind and struck with tiny stinging bits of snow from the nearest snowbank.

Otherwise, it was a surprisingly pleasant morning outside.

Anyway, I’m not sure it’s quite a poem or if it’s more a piece of flash fiction, and I may at some point try to revise it a bit more (I still don’t think “commonplace comedians” is quite doing what I want) but anyhow, here’s “November:”

“November”

by Stephanie Flint

I am angry.

I will wreck your ships.

I will send your leaves plummeting to frostbit dirt. Gray grass shall be buried under their damp blankets, and what pale green that strives to remain shall wither under desolate quilts of brown and yellow.

I will knock aside your trash bins and claim your forlorn cardboard boxes of stale, leftover pizza.

These will tumble and toss and fly, fly into my airspace, and you shall not know where they have been sent. They will fade a cold, dreary death into the grasp of winter; be forgotten.

But you will not forget me.

Grand men will tell tales to immortalize those lost to the wrecks. Lovely women will sing of lost leaves and clinging hopes. Commonplace comedians will provide needed laughter by recalling trash bins long tumbled past Sally’s yard.

The pizza, though, will be lost forever.

You will remember my gales of November.

As a note… the little bits of inspiration that I was picturing when I wrote this:

“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” by Gordon Lightfoot

“The Last Leaf” by Blackmore’s Night

“Trash Can Wind Meters” as seen on FacebookA reference both to the Fifth of November poem (which I know more from V for Vendetta than knowing the actual poem) and another reference to “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”

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Happy reading and writing! 📚