In the still solitude of the winter
woods a hush hangs on the landscape
of dark tree trunks standing like
sentry posts amid great pine forest
giants anchored firmly by an
accumulated snow pack sifted
generously with fresh-fallen snow.
The sky, too, hovers, a mirror
image of the ground billowed with
snow, shimmering pearl-grey,
silver, white. The silence suddenly
broken by a coarse, hoarse racket
of deafening dimensions. A murder
of crows slaughtering the peace.
They shift and shuffle around the
prickly, lofty spires of two-masted
pines whose size bespeak their
majesty, dignity offended by the
rudeness of the invading horde;
cackling, croaking, lifting their
black wings outspread like phantoms
circling the landscape of the sky.
There, there's that silhouette
lodged deep in my heart. I see
him even at that distance, in
that crowd descending the airport
escalator, even as his father
declares "there he is!" And,
there he is, as we grasp one
another, we and our youngest.
His face now defined and finely
chiseled with his own years
on the very cusp of a half century,
his smile broad, this child of ours,
asking how we are, seeing how
we are beside him, sheaves
of grey in his beloved hair.
How strange it is to welcome
briefly home the child we loved,
cherished and nurtured then bade
farewell as he confidently and with
ease sought his own life where we
are mere postscripts. How sweet
it is for the distance breached,
hearing his broad laugh directly
beside us in the gentle flesh.
She is young and vivacious
though as a mother of two
young adults, not that young
in fact. Yet so much in life
is so obviously relative and to
the grey-haired woman beside
her, the pretty, charming
woman was young and
gregariously extroverted,
so much so that their brief
companionable proximity
serendipitously served in
its warmth to gift the elderly
woman with the sweet illusion
of herself, renewed in youth.
Fittingly, or not, the younger
woman wore casual exercise
pants and as the two ambled
side by side in the woods, the
legend, coyly, perkily appearing
on her derriere read, "Naughty".
Delighting her companion no end.
