We bathed in the summer wind, feeling it eddy-hug all that we are. Our bare arms were its pianos as it played keys in soft cascades. Of wintry wind, it bore no resemblance. Of ice, it carried none. Instead, with fragrant notes that swirled, with the patience of aeons and love’s everlasting hope, it serenaded to the angel within.
The pen was the blue of an hour before midnight, the blue right before the constellations sang. It wrote oxygen into her blood. It amplified her heart’s ba-boom. It replaced the colour of her eyes when it ebbed more pale than an almost extinguished ghost. In her hand it was heat. To the page it was life. To nature it was hope. To the untrained eye it was cheap plastic born of crude oil. To appear so ordinary and yet do so much, Ariah couldn’t see it as anything less than magic.
On approach, the sunny beams enveloped an unvarnished door, one born in evergreen forests yonder. My hand raised, fingers tight-tucked, breath catching in my chest, I rapped and rapped again. My heart raced. My brain fizzed. Then, it opened to reveal her sweet sesame eyes; in those orbs I once lived and died. More yet in time, with love, I pray to be reborn. For they are my kindling and crucible; into them this lost phoenix submits. Come flame. Come ash. With a willing heart, I am home to stay.
Upon shoreline slumbered clouds too sleepy to make their way into the sky. The tide was their lullaby with its winged karaoke-choir. Squawk. Ah-ah! Ah ah! Squawk! Their never changing sea shanty did ring out. Then, as a timid drummer to this coastal band, came the clickety clack of the Via Rail. It would be several long breaths before its lights could battle the fog, yet wait, wait, wait… With each passing moment timidness gave way to bold strikes and the headlamps pierced the white-out with ease. Today was the day they’d booked it to stop here, at the GPS coordinates for, “Where the heck is that?” It’s a good name for an almost hamlet. Maybe we’ll call it that. And so the behemoth of steel slowed to an easy jog before coming to a stop. "All aboard! All aboard!” the train’s master did shout.
Whispering wands of grasses, tall and softly green, clothed the warming field. Sweet spring and lady summer were its tailor. Oh, how they adore their embellishing blooms! Oh how they adore their silken aromas! Daily it is our joy to see the changes each brings, how upon such artistic whim arises cornflower and daffodil. Poppies in gayest riot! Buttercups a merry jig! What magic there is in humble things. Oh, those whispering wands of meadows, rolling and sweet, clothed my warming dreams.
The wind was winter’s scarf, a plain knit of wooly ice. To bare boughs, to rooftop slates, to roadways and thoroughfares same: it wrapped itself in cruel delight, not once, not twice, yet thrice. It gusted and hollered. It twisted in warped glee, stealing heat, ignoring light. Yes, the wind that day was an unholy thing, unleashed with neither manner nor wit. Rude. It was rude. And, one doesn’t forget such a happening.