November 2025

As we enter November, the days feel shorter, colder, and darker, and this time of year always feels like a period of transition. Alexander McCall Smith muses on the ideas of endings and goodbyes in this poem, from his collection I Think of You, which beautifully reflects the transient nature of the seasons.

How To Say Goodbye

Each year we find ourselves surprised
By the rapidity with which summer
Shrugs off its leaves, leaving the stage
To a windier customer, not inhibited
From showing us his braggadocio;
And so it is with other things that end,
We may look up and see they’ve gone
Before we had the time to say Don’t go,
And all that’s left is bonfire smoke
And memories of light and warmth.

Few things end without a note
Alerting us to transience;
As children, the world in which we live
Is secure in immortality,
As we are too; there’s always time,
Until suddenly we learn there’s not;
That is how it works, we’re told,
When we protest against the fact.

And so, goodbyes, which might have been
Provisional, are final now;
Inoculation against life’s pain
Is unavailable in our ordinary disease;
Loss is natural, which makes our world
So precious; no one, ever, has successfully
Fought a campaign against it, nor would wish
To be the failed Canute of such a cause.

The proper language of farewell
Is spoken quietly, and with regret,
Makes no claims to what it cannot
Possibly deliver – gives no promises;
And yet goodbye, which is a word
Whose meaning we often learn too late,
Still leaves us well provided for:
Your smile is sunshine on the hills,
Your laughter is the chuckle
Of a burn; your kindness is the way
The earth continues to provide
Ripening grain and pendant fruit,
Things you’ve left behind, have given us.

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I Think of You is the second poetry collection from Alexander McCall Smith, published by Polygon.