The season of gathering is upon us. Amid the cooking, the congregating, and the gratitude - some of which, let’s face it, can feel performative or forced - let us remember this November to pause and savor our memories of the season so recently passed and to honor the “good harbor” which the natural world offers us all, all year round.

Good Harbor

by Mary Bonina

Sun too optimistic for Fall,

when vines at the arbor release

their perfume, the ready grapes,

bursting for harvest, waiting

for pies, sorbet,

or for the birds to eat them up.

On the beach, a sporty breeze

jets a spritz of scent: sea roses, pine.

The roses all fuchsia,

twitch: bees troubling them.

Scrub grass where terns nested,

gone from upright stalks

like hay, now downed and twisted

into golden threads, the sign still

there, warning “Stay Off!”

Boardwalk dry and sandy:

no more drippy swimmers.

At sunset, a shift.

White gull feathers go to pink

and off shore the light

paves a silvery path.

Air and water turn chilly then.

The roses dim, but eager bees

still fluff their warren of petals,

make those roses go wild.

Too fast, it’s twilight.

Mary Bonina lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is the author of two poetry collections: Clear Eye Tea and Living Proof. She is also the author of the chapbook, Lunch in Chinatown, and the memoir, My Father's Eyes. She has been a fellow of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, where in 2002, she was named finalist for the Goldfarb Family Fellowship, and has since had several residencies, including one at the Center's retreat, Moulin a Nef, in Auvillar, France. Her work has appeared in Salamander, Hanging Loose, Poets and Writers, the Worcester Review, and many other journals. Poems are forthcoming in The Lowell Review and Mom Egg. Her completed novel, My Way Home, is in search of a publisher.