winter

Winter came last night. You wake vaguely in the night to a rushing wind. The air chills. Leaves from the oak tree which were green yesterday are suddenly brown and scrambling across the tin roof. In your sleep you sense a new arrival drawing in under cover of night, purposefully setting up camp like a caravan of travelling people. Meanwhile, Summer is slowly dismantling. Down go the gaudy tents. Reluctantly frivolous drapes are torn away. The pipers and dancers and music slows.

For a few weeks the two camps share the landscape. There’s a little of each – some of Winter’s steady chill balances Summer’s giddy fuss. Everyone seems to get along so well. “It’s perfect,” you think, “why don’t they both just stay?”

But the truce never lasts.

There’s always that morning when signs of the night's big fall out lie everywhere like a massacre. The earth is frozen. Plants hang dead. The air is silent in the aftermath. And Summer’s caravan is gone, doing a midnight flit over the pass heading north, abandoning their place to narrow-eyed Winter ones who have no songs.

You know they’ll be back yet you always miss them.

But they haven’t gone yet. A few weeks still.