November Hill farm journal, 18

This week my daughter and I spotted the first V of geese flying south, and my husband brought in the first ripe wild muscadines. Yesterday and last night Hermine blew through. We got a couple of inches of needed rain and temperatures in the mid-sixties with a cool breeze that felt wonderful.

Today the horses are turned out now that the rain has passed. All of these things, geese flying, wild muscadines, hurricanes blowing about, are signs of the season I love best and for which our farm is named. 

November is the peak of color and delight here. It was the season we moved in and it remains the season when, for me, everything shines.

And it matches my favorite poem in all the world.

"Wild Geese," by Wendell Berry from Collected Poems 1957-1982 (North Point Press).

The Wild Geese

Horseback on Sunday morning,
harvest over, we taste persimmon
and wild grape, sharp sweet
of summer's end. In time's maze 
over fall fields, we name names
that went west from here, names
that rest on graves. We open
a persimmon seed to find the tree
that stands in promise,
pale, in the seed's marrow.
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear,
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. What we need is here.

I love the last lines best. The wild muscadines are especially sweet this year.