November / Marjorie Allen Seiffert

November

Where, like ghosts of verdant days
  Whispering down,
Leaves in the November haze
  Drift and drown,

Stand two lovers, motionless
  And apart
In their sturdy nakedness
  Of the heart —

Two dark figures, side by side
  In the mist,      
Standing as though time had died
  Since they kissed;

Whose deep roots, alive and sound
  Blindly reach,
Mingling in the fertile ground      
  Each with each.

Pray that we, when gaunt and old,
  Like bare trees
Through our common earth may hold
  Close like these!    

~~
Marjorie Allen Seiffert (1885-1970)
from Poetry, November 1917

[Poem is in the public domain in the United States]

Marjorie Allen Seiffert biography