You are cold and harsh this year, my dear. You gave us glorious snow two years ago. Snow that stopped the world, that created mounds in the roads, that fell in heavy heaps from the trees, thumping softly and unseen below. Snow that created a muffled silence, a glazed paradise.
Now, you are empty fields, frozen soil. Sheep droppings in icy piles. Wet puddles, rain. Desolate, muddy moisture.
You have lost your ardour, November. And I have nothing to do, so I am soaking in the dreary fields, with tired eyes. I feel like the days are all merging into one.
Heavy clouds scud across the sky and I see perpetual frondescence before me, endless and ending. Scene flashing in and out of focus as my feet trudge over grazed grass, chewed down to the stalk. Wherever I turn I see the world shrouded in ceaseless grey, evergreens surging up in the corner of my vision, a chasm, yet so full of being.Every breath I take is life, photosynthesis, respiration, cells laboring throughout organisms, cogs in the machine of life, breathing, working, living.
But oh, November, it feels so still to me. I don’t see your city lights, twinkling through the cold haze in the night. I don’t see warm shop windows, glittering with Christmas preparations. No fancy boots, woolly scarves snuggling into crisp, smiling faces, red noses, fluffy hats, curls tumbling over pretty, fashionable coats. Heels clicking, merry music wafting on the breeze, hot donuts sprinkled with sugar, carts of candy cane and coloured balls of fluffy sugar on the high street. No rush, hurry, drama.
It’s all emptiness here. Rolling hills, scuffled footprints of animals long gone, mist creeping over dark terrain, pitch black, death everywhere. I longed for emptiness, November, and green. I longed for trees and nature. Now I am not so sure.
Sometimes I wake up in the dark and I watch the branches of the evergreens swaying madly in the night, hear the menacing whistle of forces I cannot see hurtling over grassland, and I sit beneath the sky light wondering about the outside, in this snug cocoon of fluffy pyjamas and spotlights and heat storage radiators.
I can’t help but wonder, sometimes; where do I stand in this vast system of existence?
Hurry up, November, and send us some snow, that I might listen to the glistening stillness, and behold the world muted for a moment, holding its breath, so I can catch up at long last.
Ocean Bream 