lionboy

Something I wrote for a friend on a whim

...the rich scent of earth mingling with freshly fallen leaves, the snap of winter in the air warning those who are attentive of the season soon to come. Normally placid ponds where we swam and frollicked in our youth, when it was acceptable to frollick, whipped into a frenzied chop by the restless wind. Yet the turbulence of the surface belies a secret stillness in the depths that cannot be touched, cannot be perturbed. Down where the muck and mire of decaying vegetation from years upon years past, essential for renewal, for the lively pulse of the lake in times yet to come. All winds down winds down... preparing for the stillness and for some hardships before all renews. These sights, these smells, sounds bring memories to the fore of the chore of neatly piling discarded vegetation, leaves no longer needed then leaping from a noisy, whooping, elephantine sprint and undoing the work of hours. The promise of the latter making the former bearable, if not ecstatic labor. Mothers indoors making hot cocoa because mothers inexplicably know to do that sort of thing. Sitting, warming small hands on cups that are, "very hot be careful" as mothers are wont to warn at least in fantasy memories for those of us who don't wish to see in our mind's eye what circumstances really were like. Memories that fit picture prints from the fifties by Ives. The sights and smells may have been as we remember but the people are a different story entirely.