Low-Key Festivities



The way the wind blows is roguish today. It ties knots in loose hair, chucks tree debris, tugs at moorings. One pheasant attempting flight is held at a hover till it gives up. Clouds are pushed till they fall into one fuzzed grey spread.

Indoors, a busy oven: the last of the pumpkin seeds roast, a pan of butter boils to ghee. The floors are swept and we are indecisive about the washing.


Drive home from work under a dark sky, not one firework appears.

There are evenings when we have stood, bundled in outdoor padding, sighing at flagrant fires in the sky: tiny against mountainous flames: writing shapes with fizzing white heat: thrilled by the tar barrels: ears crackling with luminous shrieks.

Indoors, behind the Rayburn door, coals and hand-hewn logs form an orange opal underworld. The flames are lazy, magnificent, mauve-tinted.



Comments

Suze said…
What is burning?

(I don't want to be like the pheasant.)
6 November 2013 at 16:56
Lisa Southard said…
Tar in the barrel- dangerous and stunning! Google 'Tar barrels Ottery St Mary' to find out more: we all got a bit singed but no burns!
I don't think we are pheasants. They are clumsy movers, very reactionary :-)
6 November 2013 at 22:03
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