Then the day comes blue with a change of wind. We have blue, white, gray and green. It's hard to recognize this place as the one I've slept in and woke to. The stage goes still. The brush of dust of snow that carries with it all this sun and breeze. It doesn't seem to want any other way to be. This is cold and sleeping.
Warm beneath is the ground somewhere. I know the bulbs lay dormant around the big oak and by the granite boulder . The buds of trees are wrapped tight . I know the white mound of stone and snow by the pines. My Abrahamic Alter and BBQ pit. So this is still my home. This is where my heart will build its fire. If I rise at all , my roots will warm from here.
Before the pond freezes sometimes a fog will rise over the early snow. It hangs about the height of a person. I guess that's all it needs. Just enough to cloud the gaze from here to what you might usually see. It's a blindfold curtain on the world beyond the close trees. So the fog rises to hide my dreams and leave them for a different morning.
In the warm season that fog announces the rise of insects too. When spring turns deeper and the eggs hatch all around. Some of these bugs will live on my blood , breed with it. My DNA in the life track of families of Mosquitos and black flies . My children's blood too . All so those small bugs can make kids of their own . We are pretty close around here. I hope they appreciate our contribution. And of course the birds eat the bugs . Up the chain we go .
So the birds ... It had been my habit for quite some time to practice my ney flute in the mornings in my shop while the sun got stronger. I would hear the birds and play the ney. I know they hear every note and know I'm not a creature they need to worry about. Every detail of this ground they see better than I . They know details I will miss. They food they find, the whir of insect wings , the cats approach and the shadows of Hawks and Eagles . They watch the crows , who of course know me. All the crayon box of songbirds who hear me find my songs , give back in music every small change , pace and small beat of this small place. The snow fall quiets that.
Their tunes in the dark and in the wind and the small clicks and brushes of the wind itself. These tunes are etched slow and strong on the hidden , blank wax cylinders deep in my silent places . They rise with me and I with them . Every cold and warm zone too of sun and shade and avenue of strongest breeze.
Every spot on the surface of the earth has its own view of the track of the sun. It would seem so standard. We walk through the scenes of a million ways to be on our short runs . All the soft clouds that cool the place, that keep you from the embrace or shield you from the strike . They move as soon as mentioned . Even the huge blanket of thick gray silence the winter clouds show up with. Still between the nodding pines and bare oak and ash branches , the sun finds its way to your face just so.
The power it invests in this patch of ground is tiny in its spin and scope of earth. But every root of grass relates . All the green blossoms of shady moss. A small strength there moves gently over to where I stand.
