Saturday evening. She has gone and I am alone again. The ice is leaving too.
I stand at the door of the hut feeling the sharp chill of the frozen air. I know this is the last night. The warmth of the rest of the year will sweep through in the coming wind.
Walking over Chailey Common that morning. Trees still frosted, muddy paths still crisp, pools and streams trapped in brown ice. A sharp magic everywhere. In my breath. On my skin. Under my feet. But soon this magic will be gone.
And now. A day later. This evening. Air from the west. Warmer now. Big sky over darkening meadow. Blue-grey cumulus quickly on the move. Thin crescent moon. Evening birdsong. Joyance.
The ice has gone and something new is here. My thoughts, resisting the abstraction of time, dwell on the movement of sun, moon and earth. No, to say that again. There comes a moment when the relations of the elements open a pathway to a new season. When the earth is at certain place with the sun and the moon hangs as it does just now and the jet stream snakes as it does and the dance of high and low shifts to a certain juxtaposition. Then, and only then, the air changes and the birds sing the spring and the buds break open and the grass is wet not iced.
Or did the Blackbird sing this into being or did the Ash sway this into life or did the lake soften everything into moistness again?
Everything is relations. Everything is movement. Everything dances with everything. It is not the things that make the moment; it is their movement, their relations and their dance.
I stop my thinking and swing with the sway.
Image mine.
