The words May and June are easier to rhyme. But November has
inspired its share of poetry, including children’s poems by J.
Patrick Lewis and John Updike that build toward a Thanksgiving
meal. Lewis celebrates the joys of the month in “November,” a
16-line rhyming poem collected in Thanksgiving: Stories and
Poems (HarperCollins, 1989, ages 7 and up), edited by Caroline
Feller Bauer and illustrated by Nadine Bernard Westcott. He
writes of pumpkin pies, “the thank-you bird” and other seasonal
pleasures: Red squirrels, busy packing Oak cupboards for weeks,
Still rattle the branches With seeds in their cheeks. The
meaning of that quatrain is clearer than the first lines of the
poem: “The bottoms of autumn / Wear diamonds of frost.” Are the
lines talking about part of the natural landscape, such as the
low areas next to rivers known as “bottoms”? Or are they
referring to the patterns left on our clothes when we sit on
frost-covered park benches? John Updike’s more eloquent
“November” is among the 12 poems, one for