winter day, soft and grey (compressed)

December 26, 2009 at 11:56 pm (Uncategorized)

 

there were songbirds in the garden yesterday. I thought I could see the shadows of their voices in the snow.  Today the gentle rains came tapping cold fingers on the windows, little rivers winding approximately downward to the icy deck. The rain had an apologetic air, as if sorry for the wind and fury of the last storm.

There was a river at the ocean too, a nice big one, one of those tidal pools lifted by the storm over the mounded wash of beach to the base of the dune, so calm and shallow and smooth I was tempted to strip down join the dogs paddling through it. They had at first tried to walk though and found to their sudden wide-eyed shock it was deeper than their little legs were long. Miss Moon, the oldest one with of course the one difficult heart, stood aghast in what appeared to be horror and had to be air lifted out, but the others soon recovered their poise and discovered winter swimming was just exactly what they had planned all along. The legal tenants of the beach, the long-billed muscular ocean-master birds flapped and swooped and voiced their protests at our intrusion, so we left them to their cold grey watery skies, hied home, and jumped into the Japanese soaking tub to warm up and shed some of the acre of sand the dogs’ coats managed to scuffle along. The sweet, powedry-almond smell of their shampoo filled the steamy room in the loveliest way. Eight towels later we were all dried and relatively dressed and ranged around the woodstove (me with my big squishy socks and hot chocolate, they with their treats), where I sat for a while trying to read “When Things Fall Apart” but wanting really only to watch the silvered, shimmering rain, and the smooth drifts of snow in the garden. I think tomorrow the songbirds will visit again, and trail their tuneful shadows like long, silken nets over the snow.