I know this morning’s run is gonna be cold so I add an extra shirt and a scarf, and I trust my hands will be warm in my insulated “wind-shield” gloves. At six in the morning, I am ready for the cold dark and duck when it tries to strike my face. My breathing is regular, not caught in gasps, and my ears are covered by my black headband, my pigtails sprouting on top.
I have dreaded the closing dark of Winter as the Wheel of Seasons relentlessly turns, but constantly I have been surprised at how time slows in the light and shadows that flit and move during the crepuscular morning hours like sparrows in summertime sprinklers.
Yesterday morning when I headed out early, the temperatures dipped like swallows in streetlights and trees, but the wind bit, an injured dog. At times, I felt like I was running in place with the wind pushing me back and the cold pulling me forward, a cantilevered seesaw.
It is still bitterly cold with the official temperature at one degree Fahrenheit, though the wind chill drops numbers along an angled shoulder into negative digits, and I am surprised as I see the waning moon that tugs away the quilt of clouds permitting the cold that prohibits the light of stars. The huge night’s sky becomes dunes of jet black-blue.
Sun isn’t ready yet, and without the light of stars, I decide to follow the path of street lights. Sidewalks, inconsistent, rupture from the roots of trees, although the streets are smoother, and the steps I choose resemble the series of lines in grey pencil I sketch on paper.
I am not running alone as I hear the steps of my orange pine needles that match my stride blown down the street by the wind, although Saturday’s starlings moving on telephone wires like black and white eyebrows that twitch, chattering like noisy raindrops, are silent.
But, as the dark tries to hold me back, cold moves me forward, restoring balance.
In the vestibule of morning, the single digits of cold do not scare me although I am chilled to the bone as I finish while the Sun stretches and yawns, its skein of silver turning to ribbons of light.
White Frost on Black Scarf, 12/8/2009
(The only issue I have with the frigid cold is in my purple-mobile as I drive. The heater I blast on high sends my dashboard collection of berries, leaves, and stems throughout my car like debris on water’s edge. No worries...I happily regather them each time.)
GL, 12/8/2009. Prevail.
I love the windstorm debris in the car. Wind capured in the car with all the ammenities. You arrive at Starbucks blown assunder with leaves in your hair and declare, the wind is wicked today!
ReplyDelete