By Sofía Méndez
The Grvy’s Poem of the Month is a standing appointment: one poem, on the first of the month, chosen for the season we’re actually in. We continue with November, the month that hands an hour back in the morning and takes the light away by supper.
The Hour We Get Back
Tonight the clocks surrender an hour
and we pretend the gift is time,
when really it is darkness, arrived early,
settling at the table before supper.
The leaves are down now, not falling —
that verb belonged to October.
November takes what is already on the ground
and makes it honest, makes it mulch.
On the altars, marigolds hold their color
against the photographs of the dead,
who are not summoned so much as expected,
the way rain is expected from a gray sky.
The fields have given up their argument.
What was planted has been gathered or lost,
and the earth, unembarrassed, rests —
a lesson the living keep refusing to learn.
Soon we will count chairs again for a feast,
leave one set for whoever is missing,
say grace over food that steamed and cooled
while someone was still finding parking, still forgiving.
This is the month of the held note:
elections counted, veterans standing in cold cemeteries,
the year clearing its throat before winter,
asking, without sentiment, what we meant by it all.
Take the extra hour. Do not spend it well.
Sleep past the alarm. Let the light do what it wants.
An hour returned is not an hour saved —
it is proof that even time, once, can apologize.
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