Saunter to a Waltz – 12/17/2021
A cold moon, not quite full, made a brief appearance above the rocky upheaval to the west, its recent absence noted by the lives awaiting dawn. The Man finds that he has slowly released the concept of lucid dreams, opting for a life subsumed by the night, a consciousness dictated by the flow of these fantasies in his waking hours. A wind moves pockets of cool air along a ridge and things begin to move. Leaves creep along the trail. Trees sway in a vague threat, like The Man losing his concentration in the middle of the Vrksasana pose. Clouds drive, consuming the small lights in the sky. The lake chatters along the bank like a wide river. Watched from a narrow alley into the rustling reeds, The Man hears the slow grinding of bones pause and sees black veils of unrecognized origin survey the meadow in mild disgust. Rain will fall in December at elevations above 6,500 feet; the consequence of compromise eating away at the earth.
In a quiet seduction of nature, naked limbs of emboldened willows stretch enticingly above the coquettish rump at the small of the vale’s back and crease the face of that cold moon, only slightly showing her age, as she lights the way into the woods for a rare excursion during this darkest of months. The kind lady throws The Man’s image to the east, his covered head resting on the plains, making him as tall as he once was. Being distracted by the candy cane grades of silver caressing the grove of a picket fence promenade, built from the trunks of ponderosa pines, he finds himself off the trail taking umbrage with the hardened appendage of a lusty gamble oak. He observes that the spines of the yucca have been softened by the gnawing of desperate deer. The old satellite strives through the stubborn cloak to ease our congenital fear of the dark, where the cockroaches hide, knowing that soon the day begins to fight its way back from the famine of light embraced by the planet, though it is never quite as bright as it was before the shadows fell.
Then a mammoth mass of eerily ominous vapors rises from the covert valleys among the mountains and devours the moon like a python swallowing a small mammal, dropping the curtain on the play. And, as he strides down the gentle slope, The Man realizes he has been enjoying the season’s rhyme in three-quarter time.
Merry Holidays,
Happy Christmas, and most of all,
SupercalifragilisticexpialiSolstice
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