New Kid in Town

     Winter is barely come and I can’t help but wish it gone. I miss the beach and the grass and the leaves and the warm gentle wind that the cold has chased away. I miss the ripe and nutty smell of autumn leaves. I miss the soft sweet grass of spring and the brilliant green of fiddle heads as they unfurl in the morning sun. I miss the lingering heat of the sand at the beach as the sun retires for another day. God help me but I miss the humid heat of August with the cicadas screaming murder in the trees and leaving transparent skins hanging like empty corpses from the pine trees at the edge of the yard.

I want to fill my lungs with the smell of flowers and dirt and raspberries and tomatoes. I want to lay face down in the grass and watch the marching formation of ants on parade while the bumblebees buzz a gentle accompaniment as they trundle from flower to flower. I can almost hear the snap of linen as the sheets dance in the breeze. I can almost feel the warmth of the sun on my back. I want to fill my hands up with the good soil of my garden and let it blacken my palms and crust under my nails. I want to sit by the bonfire on a night so clear and star filled that it’s quite easy to believe that I am sitting at the very center of the universe.

I know I might feel differently on a particular winter day. That winter day will be windless and warm. The sky will be clear and the light from the sun will be so bright that the reflection off of the snow will be almost too much to bear. Everything will be crisp and clean, a new and unknown place to explore with mysteries to discover. That day I know I won’t think about the cold and the wet and the sleeping earth.

 

That day is not today. The ground is unyielding and the sky is grey. Winter, just arrived, seems so weighty and solemn. I miss the passion of the waking, living earth now frozen under the weight of ice and snow. What I wouldn’t give for the light caress of a spring breeze, the heat of a summer night and the sharp kiss of autumn.