The
sky full of snow. Wispy feathers floating down. Some don't survive
their descent from grey sky to grey earth. Some melt in flight, some
drift. Others melt immediately upon touchdown, affronted by the hard
surface upon which they've landed.
If
this was the country they'd be absorbed into the earth; earth that
is, in spite of the rains that have fallen, in places cracked and in
desperate need of water. The land, as well as their landing, more
exposed. More bare, more ragged, more overgrown; tracks of churned up
mud. Hedges, brambles, thickets, bushes with winter berries and tiny
birds nestling in them; fields, brown in colour with a few dulled
patches of green. No rural landscape is quite the same as another.
The
feathers if their fall is cushioned pile up, though only in the
colder regions will they last. But not for long. The biting northerly
wind will see to that. Only if it drops will there be snow; a
mattress for children to race up hills and toboggan down.
But
this is town. And in towns, snow, when it comes, behaves differently.
It
swirls and dances; wanders into the path of a woman who could be
taken for Mrs Dalloway, with her frock-coat and wide-brimmed hat and
slim gloved hands. Her hurried steps suggest she's making for home or
shelter, where perhaps a warm fire or a friend awaits her. There will
be tea and toast, wherever she goes. It's that time of day: too late
for lunch, too early for supper. Though it seems later, the sky is
that dark.
A
ghost. Of what once might have been. Like fogs of steam which conceal
and then when cleared reveal the person seen has gone. Vanished. From
whence they came. Back to it. A dimension with fragile borders, which
can be passed through only if certain conditions arise and where they
might only be discerned by a few, who will be disbelieved if they
speak of it. These illusions, or apparitions if you like, are meant
to be ruminated upon, not shared.
Dragon
breath. Caterpillar smoke.
The
feathers are still being plucked, and sent downwards.
On
a contemporary apartment block, three floors up, a pigeon alights on
an icy window ledge, to rest, or, even possibly, just out of
curiosity, and is then taken aback to discover a woman kneeling on
the other side of the pane. For a brief second they eye each other,
small black bead to larger blue-grey marble, before the pigeon takes
fright and flutters off, crying (the woman thinks) the alarm of
Serpent! and taking with it her chance to protest: that she's not a
Serpent, has indeed never been one and has no wish to be one. Though
she has tasted of and does like eggs. Pigeon! she exclaims. She looks
at herself in the mirror and laughs. If there were icicles they would
tinkle with it. Icicle bells.
The
town's clock strikes instead.
Eleven.
The
scenery, and time, too, changes, often, but is always set against a
misty, white-dotted air.
Above,
the pillow fight continues. The feathers fall faster, as if more
opponents swinging pillows have joined the fray, and so more seams
have given way, burst, spilling their contents, to drift and spiral
with increasing speed. Each like a parachutist, in difficulty, who
has no choice but to land but doesn't know if he'll survive. There
are too many obstacles. Pedestrians, high-rise and low-level
buildings, silvery roads and traffic lights, moving and stationary
vehicles, trees.
There
is nowhere safe in a town. A collision, of some sort, is inevitable.
Whereas
on a moor or over marshland, there's freedom. More space to land, air
to drift in, even, pushed along by the winds, to exist for just a
little bit longer, before becoming part of the earth, decorating it
first in shimmering drops and then sinking into its soil.
And
so there's also time to settle, gently, on isolated figures: on a
bird of a girl – in her hair, in her mouth, in her eyes - who like
Jane Eyre is stumbling over the moors, distraught, unthinking; or a
young girl, very much like Fritha, with a wounded snow goose in her
arms.
Recommended reading: Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and The Snow Goose by Paul Gallico.
Picture credit: Early Evening After Snowfall, 1906, Childe Hassam.
All posts published this year were penned in 2019.
