Like so many poems by Robert Frost, “My November Guest” has been set to music by several composers.
In the poem, Frost calls his guest “Sorrow,” but she delights in the dreariness of late autumn and insists that the “dark days of autumn rain” are “beautiful as days can be.”
She loves the bare withered trees, the sodden pastures and the heavy skies. And she is convinced that the poet fails to appreciate November's beauty.
He doesn't have the heart to tell her that he has loved those bare November days all along. Perhaps November's beauty is easier to appreciate when we understand what is happening beneath those heavy skies.
Orchardists know that fruit trees need the cold of winter to prepare for spring blossoms and another harvest.
Fish biologists know that November is spawning season for lake trout and lake whitefish in the Great Lakes.
And ecologists know that fallen leaves provide an insulating blanket for soil and shelter for countless small creatures, eventually decomposing and recycling nutrients into the forest.
But perhaps November's most valuable gift comes with those dark days of autumn rain.
With trees dormant and evaporation slowing, more rain can soak into the earth instead of returning to the atmosphere.
November rains help replenish soil moisture, restore wetlands, sustain streams, and recharge groundwater before winter closes in.
What appears to be a dreary, lifeless season is actually a time of renewal, as nature quietly prepares for another spring.
Perhaps that's what Robert Frost understood all along. Even those dark days of autumn rain have a beauty of their own.
And, like Frost, I have learned "to love of bare November days/Before the coming of the snow.”
