Winter is an acquired taste, one which no one ever has savored more than Henry David Thoreau. As another winter settles in and a new, uncertain year approaches, I’ve been turning to Thoreau’s journals for reassurance that beauty still can be found even within the darkest of days.

The year has dwindled down to days. How do we not tote up our gains and losses, our quotidian triumphs and catastrophes? How do we not wonder which will fade and which will remain as we sidle into the unknown wilds of 2025?

The season of brilliance known as Fall Foliage is now past its peak. Nature, never one to indulge in instant gratification, will keep us waiting until next year for such glory to return again. Indeed, as October fades into November, the comparison to the morning after a much anticipated celebration is difficult to avoid. Whatever emotional let-down we might feel is physically reflected in the dull, dry leaves skittering and piling around our feet…

Poem of the Month followers are, in great probability, people who care about the environment and the arts. There is an equally great probability that you, dear readers, are fully aware of the impending election. Therefore, for this last, long month before the first Tuesday in November, we offer you a wise and calming meditation inspired by the beauty of our favorite farm. 

September is a liminal time. Some days, summer still lingers in the air.  Yet, there are other days – increasingly so - when the suddenly chilly winds stir the changing leaves and send us scrambling for our sweaters. 

August is sun and heat. It is vegetation, sere-edged and crisp underfoot; and it is fruit nearing ripeness on the tree.  And sometimes, often with little warning, it is the punch and wonder of a late-summer thunder storm.

Twilight in July is a mystical and liminal time. Within its shadows mingle the vestiges of the day’s bright, hot glory and the night’s hushed, fragrant promise of soothing respite. July evenings bridge and blend two distinct environments and, in so doing, create a new one all its own.

June’s gifts are rich and dazzling. Indeed, after the sun finally has set on these, the longest, loveliest days of the year, June lavishes us further with magic.

As the second Sunday of May approaches, mothers – all those literal, legal, and figurative mothers who bore us or reared us or mentored us – fill our minds.  May your thoughts at this time be joyful and multitudinous. And, if they are not, may nature, popularly personified as the ultimate maternal figure,  provide you with inspiration and solace.

Such a luscious month in New England that it seems akin to blasphemy to mark its start with a day to celebrate pranks and fools. Let’s, instead, look to April’s twenty-nine other days, each one ripe with nature’s promise and National Poetry Month’s poems. Let’s emulate poet Louise Berliner and “follow the tangle and the tendril” into the serious delight and enlightenment the rest of April has on offer.

The first day of March marks the start of meteorological spring. Yesterday, on a stroll around the Acton Arboretum, I came upon a clutch of snowdrops, the first I’ve seen this season.  Their white petals, delicately edged in the green of summer grass, nodded to a ground still winter bleak and bare. All about us the world is awakening, from low to the ground to high above in the blue-lit sky.

February is full of surprises. Just when you think the snow will never end, you awaken to a balmy thaw. The pond, once frozen solid, is suddenly set free in startled dishevelment. Yes, February is nature’s roller coaster ride: Unpredictable and fast - just like life.