The ocean is slow to warm and slow to cool, shivers at edges of winter and, like the lover it is, cannot let go.
December talks its way up filaments of frangible shinbones old knees hang onto and aches under the belly like bruised melons. The edge of nearby Prankers Pond remembers Pressburn Hill in pieces, flushed worms, in summer sometimes a shadow, but now is awed in one circular gesture by slick understanding of cold and how it means, a sudden crawl of the calcified year.
The sky tugs on clouds of dirty gray bunting not unlike an old man, supine on a park bench, yanks an oft-patched coat up hard beneath his chin.
High up under the massing of the dark stitch work and thick repair of clouds, birds, mostly gulls in the roughing, ride their interpretation of the day like radar blips on a major screen.
Closer here, red-winged blackbirds, at nest protection in reeds of the briny path, dive fast as fighter planes at fishermen, waders, worm and clam diggers, like Corsairs and Mustangs, even Spads in the mix of time.
Deserted arms of maples, once maniacal oaks at odds, yield screams from their limbs, eerie punctuation of frigid dance the ice ache silently embalms long before a chain saw’s teeth, before temporary imprisonment of the maul, working itself down through an aged core, escapes.
It is enough to know reprieve after the stunning and the awe passing under broad wind; that the days grow longer counted by a handful of stars, that a dimly defiled crocus, emboweled in tiers of ice, abducted, waits fair ransom, waits to leap away with spring now under the folded arms of Earth, while the ocean becomes lover again.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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