Here is the canvas of the sky: one long stroke of gray where it is brushed upon the blue blue pastel of the day, it is an overhead wave, a sun-shade, a blanket pulled up past the eyes, water-color wrung from a sponge, a light’s-decay. And then it rains, of course. As cold as it can be, with just enough vigor in the shortening sunbeam strands to heat those flecks of ice and melt their hearts as they hurl earthward. So they fall instead of float, merge instead of mass, drop instead of drift, and winter waits another week or more to make its white appearance.
Then: haaaaaaaaaa the cold blows in from the same direction, as though this sky’s designer were one-handed, wiping the slate habitually from left to right, from sunset to sunrise. The night is black as black, and light as light, and those stars! now the evenings are cool and cooler still, seem bolder or less drowsy; they glimmer knife-like, spark-like, out of reach. You wish they would take flight and pay you visit, settle their bright visage at the edge of lawn. Why not? They are so small, they seem a jar of lightning bugs is all. The cold cold wind blows summer’s sultry nonsense far away, and every evening’s serious as geometry and careful as clocks. Tick tick, tapping from the past, leaves at the window, play-acting sleet-sounds, fleet flight to ground. Then underfoot the scent of earth is new, under heel the sound of earth is round.
~
Here’s the canvas of the heart: streaked with tears, warm rain that melts before it reaches skin, the ice it was contained within undone by sun, however short the strands of sunbeams have become. What grace to earn these seasons with a smile! What wealth to know that winter comes, then spring again; and summer, fall and winter spring, in a sprightly spin we’re fortunate to dance again, again. A cloud billows up the blue blue horizon and there it spreads until it’s gathered in, beneath its blanket, all your friends and kin. And then it rains, of course. Instead of floating, taken by the tide, our hands reach out and weather all that weather would not leave behind. We each fall earthward with a sigh, and look to heaven for wings of snow that wait to fly another day. Where knife-like, spark-like wind whips flakes upon our skin, and we wrap these layers round us to keep the precious loving in.
Ahhh, the wind cries at the corners of the mind, raises a small howling like the ghost of forgotten fright: yet it is all outside, all harmonies in November’s song: give thanks for the harvest of love, winter brings its bite. So quickly! we give thanks for love’s harvest, as the fruit of our reaching, as the one full table we have laid for ourselves, again and again, again, with delight, despite old winter’s wind.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012