JANUARY RAIN

There’s no fragrance to winter rain.  Not like in the summer when it mixes with the smell of fresh-cut grass and the color green imbued with morning light. That inch-worm, chartreuse color of April when buds first begin to unfurl. When things begin again.

No, you’re just glad it’s not ice glazing the exposed tree limbs into dangerous glass lace. Glistening skeletons that jerk the power lines down and shut down the twenty-first century. And cause the inhabitants extra skittishness.

Driving in it, you can become sleepy with the back and forth, back and forth windshield wipers pulling the tired eyelids down. Therefore, the heat should be turned lower and the defrost adjusted carefully, or is that fog blurring the distance and its dilapidating barns?

You might miss the windshield wiper of the rear window lost in the crash. But it is better not to look back so much at the vehicle creeping on your back with the threat of another car crash, remembering the explosion barely escaped in time, thankful for the bravery of strangers.

If you were just to disappear, you catch yourself thinking at a hazardous precipice looking down, how much easier? Maybe see your father again? No one has to know the darkness of your imaginings. How you have come to realize you will never love the way you thought possible once you lost the lens of  young adulthood.

That hypothetical noose you wear around your neck is not very attractive if the others could see it. Luckily, you have not yet mastered the proper knots and are more preoccupied with escaping the hamster-wheel cage routine, unknotting what others have knotted en masse.

When the guest leaves finally, you may break down again in the corner like a wild animal in your grief as the winter rain pummels the house’s rooftop, speak to the ghosts you have missed, have been unable to visit.

And when you unknot the ropes mooring the ship to the harbor and lift the heavy anchor in the continuing raw downpour, focus on the horizon line straight like a dancer poised at the core. Sail away as planned, off the grid, no taxes to pay for conglomerate corporations.

The planes continue to land though they are coming in closer because of the fog. People are still going somewhere and that in itself, lends comfort–even though it promises to rain through the night, the temperature is plummeting, and there is still much more to winter.

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3 Responses to JANUARY RAIN

  1. Myke Todd says:

    I doubt I have ever read a piece a hundred times before commenting. Some times the mood is suffocating; other times filled with resolve. I am going to just take this a great writing, from someone who I know to be encompassing, and be grateful for it.

    Still, I do wish winter would move along at a rapid pace; but hey, that’s just me.

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