Night here engulfs the day. Not by first looks, as the sun quietly blazes over these emptied boulevards, but by atmosphere. This society is eternally asleep by invisibility. This whole world is upside down, but it’s already normalised, maybe even as though things have been this way for a long time. But we know that’s not true, somewhere in the back of our heads, dulled.
asleep by invisibility
A communal mind slips back to the generic springtime ever-present in our pasts, aglow now because it became impossible right when we let our resistance slip. I dwell on the loss, for I have a lot of time to fill, and I bloat the dead minutes with meandering visions that soothe me and dump me back in unreal histories. The length of all that time seems massive, bigger than the reality of it of course, as, actually, anything could have been achieved with the correct degree of courage.
The only barriers were mental, mainly fear, which swallowed opportunity like the dank walls of a prison cell. But there was so much of this time and it invited complacency. I see it and it appears close, yet it is forever drifting. Spring used to be a wonderful surprise, essentially after those deepest of winters, when icy airflows sank and settled, bringing with them season-long white blankets. They left me unable to breathe, as I moved quickly through the purple atmosphere of blizzarded streets.
season-long white blankets
A time when further storms in the middle of the high mountains always seemed inevitable, and atmospheric changes happened two or three times a day, big swirls of chilling air arriving with the force of a premonition. Huge pre-waves asserting some reckoning, hidden away in the black alpine forests. Gradually though, very slowly, there came the glory offered by extra light and its unbelievable scent. Each year. Every time. Traditionally it was a blessing, welcomed with a joy to match the renewal of the forthcoming moment. When it happened, how I grinned as the hefty layer was peeled off the earth and a sultry, magic quality of light emerged to offer a brand new life force.
© Copyright 2021 John Maher