Apparitions of A Precocious Winter’s Evening
Hmmm, where to begin or to end in all that lies in wait for those who dare to look?
The first major snowstorm of the season is gracefully winding down. The wind has expired and the afternoon light has extinguished. The last of the handful of cars, bogged down in the driveway of my apartment building, have been unstuck and cleared away.
I’ll confess that the whining squeal of tires furiously spinning, while the car persists in sliding ever so slowly sideways, is still reverberating in my ears. Something about that frustrating occurrence echoes the times we live in. But that’s a story for another day.
Nightfall has settled quiet and serene over the city. A ghostly, gray-white glow remains in the sky as the last cold embers of the storm release a soft spray of white. I picture Old Man Winter brushing snow dust off his beard as he surveys his day’s work.
Street lamps, quivering like winter fireflies, cast feeble rings of light on the fresh snow. In the distance, a string of amber lights mark the path of cars traversing the highway as weary workers count the minutes until they reach the refuge of home and hearth.
Pine trees lining the grounds, the only living green left for life to gravitate towards, are laden with bear paws of snow. They bear the weight proudly as if to proclaim themselves kings and queens of the season. Who would dare to argue otherwise?
A curving trail of footprints winds through the pines and under the intricate, gray lacework of limbs and twigs on the deciduous trees that are long into their winter slumber. Where, I wonder, were the footsteps scurrying to, and did they reach their destination of sound mind and body?
Christmas lights glimmer and sparkle in random windows across the way. The blinking star atop a Christmas tree seems to wink especially at me. I look for a pattern, some hidden meaning or veiled truth, but cannot unravel the code.
The quilt of snow softens harsh angles and frozen shapes of mid-December. And yet, there seems something vaguely menacing in its pallid indifference. Or is that just a trick of the mind that has temporarily lost its way as it ventures forth in search of long sought answers? Perhaps it has wandered down a blind alley.
A solitary figure waits at the curb in the ashen glow of a streetlight where a great pine once stood. (Victim of last winter’s ice storm.) Who is he waiting for as the cold insinuates itself into his bones? Has his friend forgotten or abandoned him? Or perhaps, perchance, he waits in hope for someone new?
A ribbon of smoke curls and furls from the rooftop smokestacks. Rises in a small flourish, billows and rolls, dissolves into the ash of the night sky. Repeating the dance ever and endlessly with a patience I cannot help but envy.
How shall I choose just one metaphor from all that I behold? How glorify one at the expense of the others? Better instead to pull back my mind’s eye and take the panoramic view. All of life’s vast repertoire, the joy and the sorrow, the plenty and the scarcity, the hope and the despair, are here – mirrored in the apparitions of this precocious winter’s evening.
~ Michael Robert Dyet is the author of “Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel” – double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com or the novel online companion at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog .
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