Fly Away Home

XXV - France's February

My home is a faraway sight today. There will be a frost, thick and heavy and smoking, shivering and silvery and soaking into the grass; the sun will be pale pink, dewy, milky and barely licking the grass. The poplar trees will be beginning to dress themselves again in the morning light. Everything moves slowly (except the river) and there is no rush, to anywhere, for anything. Drifting and easy. As it should be, as it always was, and as it always will be, I hope. The steps will be cold and numbing, the gravel likewise and stinging and the tarmac will have a gentle, grinding hiss beneath the tires of cars passing by, from a different world, on their way to a new one. The cow's breath is foggy and their sounds slowed and lazy, smothered by the morning's hazy air. The day barely has chance to begin before the light dims, and the pink sun is drifting in a western lilac sky, fringed with an anaemic yellow, cool and cooling still. Everything drifts back to night in minus numbers. The new day opens with frozen troughs and the taps outside don't work until at least ten. We turn on the car long before getting in and pour hot water over the windshield, family is wrapped up in several coats, socks and scarves and gloves. Even the dog shivers. The sun strokes our faces gingerly before turning to tend the day and I watch, silenced by the stillness and icy air on my cheeks.

(16th February 2014)