From the daily press, the deepest nest, the keeper's keep.
Almost everything is a shade of brown. The wind-blown meadow grasses a mottled caramel, broken by the soft, light earthy yellow of swaying foxtail and brome. The transformation is nearly complete. His mother would tell him never to feel sad or resentful of the drying and shriveling of early winter, that beautiful things come with every seasonal phase, and every seasonal phase is as necessary as it is inevitable. (“May as well find some joy in it if you cannot avoid it, my darling.”). He could never provoke her constant equilibrium in himself (he had tried) — the dead heads of once bright yarrow and foxglove give him pause. Give him a flutter of disappointment, first in the unhappy sag of withered petals and then in himself.
Fresh and sun touched panes of snow could be lovely, fodder for poets and youth alike — he had traipsed his fair share of explorative curls and swirls in virgin snow. But the middling desaturation lacks anything lively, superficially at least (mother would shake her head). The season has bereaved them of green and had yet to gift them with snowfall, “A bit miserly,” he mutters disapprovingly, moving off past the encroachment of bare deciduous copses into the open meadow.
He exhales, watching his breath rise and disband in the air. It is cold and early — winter's frigidity has settled in, anchoring its fingers under root networks. Immovable, for a time. He doesn't mind the cold, terribly. He prefers warmth, but the tingle as the air passes through his airways shocks him awake this morning.
Underfoot, dawn frost has left the dead grass crunchy, and none of it looks particularly appetizing. Above, the gold of dawn has been quelled by an alarming cornflower blue. A clear and hollowed out sky, dotted with birds brave enough to stay. Slants of still too-bright sun draw slowly shortening shadows on the ground and, he notices now, everything seems to glitter around them. “There is that,” he sighs, smiling despite himself. There is always something.
It is steep, it is stone. Such Recovery.
From the daily press, the deepest nest,
the keeper's keep.