Winter

Trying to keep summer going, but it's gone.  Monday, the first hard frost killed the last of the flowers, the white garden phlox, the calendulas, the purple flowers whos names i don't know.  The last bouquet was exquisite, but full of pathos, purple, orange, gold and white tinged with pink, sort of suprised that it was still there, on the kitchen table.

But the snow is there now.  The arctic red bellied chicks are back, flitting and chipping among the snow covered black spruce.  My trail, snow covered now, reveals other travellers: the crows, squirrel, rabbit, fox.  A puppy's tracks- would that be Kathleen with Nova?  A big big dog... maybe strider has been down this way too.   No moose tracks.  No bear.

Silence, spice, the smell of snow.  Suddenly, christmas and the yule season just rise from the belly and into the blood.  The dark time of Halloween and Bonfire Night is gone.  Light and laughter is back.