The Difference a Life Makes

    Raining, not unusual here in this time, not the time I’m used to, in my backlogged memories of January. 

    Being from a place where you live unwound, spinning, bumping into seasons, their offerings hard to forget. Frozen fingers, icicled eyelids, the crack of the cold smashing into the trees, the shrieking as their blood expands, exploding gun shots in the dark of thirty below.

    Why remain within the grasp of what could kill you; did murder some, but always forgave those who kept the faith. Easter, spring, daffodils peaking through the snow to bless the survivors, allowing them to breathe again. 

    Ice, now a somber memory of the absence of July, cold stealing the stories from bodies of water, lakes, streams, Hiawatha Falls frozen solid, first time in seventeen years. The lyric, “Didn’t seem so cold then,” jumping to mind.   

    The truck sliding sideways towards the bank, impetus picking it up as though no heavier than a whim and placing it on its top, just to watch it spin. Hanging from a harness, coffee splattered windshield, memories of mornings from a future yet recognized as yesterday, probably tomorrow, but you can’t be sure looking up from under two feet of snow, everything seems the same, unmistakably what you expected.

    In layering we are taught the means to survival. A slice of cake differentiated by frosting, making it appear a different realm, but not so different that you’ve forgotten the sting of the reality it implies, having worked its way through the woolly blockades, it touches your frightened skin with its icy tongue. So many layers, putting on boots, something done on film by magicians of comedy who find joy in your efforts, laughter makes you forget the effort and pain of having spent the hour preparing for the inevitable, whose purpose you have deliberately misplaced. 

    Survival, the hope that death is easier than life, knowing that cold will be something talked about out of boredom, safe chit chat. 

    Winter will no longer have the ability to control every aspect of wakeful assumption, as the window is covered in frost and the car refuses to move until the engine believes there is a hope of heated garage somewhere in its future.

   Walking on water no longer fiction, a story from an old book, but a reality so genuine you can punch holes in its crystalline hide and sit in contemplation, until the shadowy images appear. 

    Sit too long and you will feel the effects of loaves being divided to deceive you into finding a possibility of escaping through the cellophane hole into the deep blue, where the cold cannot find you unless you need it to.

    Memories of sitting on a bucket, encapsulating the dreams of smaller wishes waiting to be used as decoys to lure larger hopes to the game where there are no winners, at least as far as visions of hope are concerned.

    The metamorphosis of air leaving the lungs and finding itself transformed to a mist that you not only see but touch, reminds you of nothing else, as you can no longer feel, the sensation being stolen by an invisible cult that insists you join if you are ever going to be part of the grand scheme of things.

     You of course object by doing nothing, and becoming petrified by the very thing that you run from, knowing it will not be left behind until the sun finds its place in the sky, permitting squirrels the safety to wander the world that has remained on the holiday cards longer than they have been asleep in the hollow of the tree, where no headless horseman dare appear dressed like a musketeer on his way to a ball in Santa Land.

    The law demands I remove the crystals from the Gulf of Mexico from the pathway, to prevent someone, anyone, from falling from grace, and embarrassing themselves, pretending their dexterity is at the cleaners, therefore not available to aid in the transition from one state of proneness to that of an elevated tower on the winter carnival grounds, where ice is worshiped for its liquidity during times of remembrance, and capable of being carved like a Thanksgiving sacrifice into elephants, who, although afraid of snow, do not mind modeling for those that take such things seriously.

   Someone, at one time or another decided to take the salt from margaritas, put it on the streets to melt hearts and rust metal, despite the objections of a valentine looking for a box in which to exist. Hopefully, there are more reasons than cold for arrows to be shot at kindnesses slipping down the path of forgetfulness and ending up believing it was all for naught, as it will all disappear on its own, once earth finds its equilibrium.

    So much of what the seasons bring, it takes in its own good time. The most we can hope for if we intend on interfering, is that we don’t get in the way. 

    The snow will ascend into heaven, the leaves will die and rise from the dead to finish what they started, the water will carry the salmon upriver in search of a new time for those yet born. 

    As much as it takes a million years to make a rock or a few hundred to destroy the one we live on, does not matter to time, it is all it has to make itself relevant. 

    We on the other hand are finite, in not only the physicality of the moment but the projections of a future when it comes to our inability to change much of anything but ourselves, and the things we touch.

    I have applied to the universe and am now on the waiting list to accompany time, dressed as a season, to the ball where the music of the water and the words of the wind, will find a place to rest temporarily, until I can catch up.

    If you feel you can’t wait for me, I forgive you. I at times have misplaced myself in the time where walking on water is no more a miracle than forgiving the eternal darkness of the season.