We’ve been hurtling towards November all along, haven’t we? And now it is here - the deepening Eastern Standard darkness, the dreaded second wave, the white-knuckle election, and the Thanksgiving like no other. Anxiety edges ever closer as we prepare to enter the long night of this long, long year.

Yet, a sense of peace is still within our grasp. Alexandria Peary, the Poet Laureate of New Hampshire, leads mindful writing workshops in which she encourages participants to think, as they inhale slowly and fully, “Here;” and as they exhale just as slowly, just as fully, “Now.” To focus on the breath in this way is to momentarily remove oneself from the fear, despair, pain, and anger which swirl around us this November. So, too, is perspective-taking, as this month’s featured poem by Zachary Bos so masterfully reminds us.

Self-Portrait from a Remove

by Zachary Bos

I saw it painted on the pines and oaks.

— Thoreau

Maybe the stars look down and see us here

like silverfish resting on the top page

of a book whose words we cannot read, let

alone make sense of. To us, this book is

bread and board, meal and meadow, a vast hall

of linen, gilt leather and letter-shapes;

but seen from that celestial vantage point

the land is a book of annals telling

the memoir-story of nature itself,

which is the deep calligraphic memory

of nature, the stage on which nature mums;

the murmuring of nature in its sleep

which is the book of the dream of nature

dreams to dream itself into mere being.

(originally published in the 2017 Plein Air Poetry chapbook, Memoir )

Zachary Bos lives with his wife and their dog in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, where he has recently hung out a slate as the proprietor of Bonfire Bookshop. He is an alum of the poetry workshops of the graduate creative writing program at Boston University, and coordinator of the BU BookLab. His writing has appeared recently in Arts & Letters Magazine, Iowa Review online, and in the chapbook Rising Up, published by the Arts on the Trails initiative in Southborough, MA. Find him on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram as @zakbos or @bonfirebooks.