Waiting

How fitting – the first really cold day on the first of December.  There is a frost on the ground and the air is sharp and still; I was even cold in bed.  The sky, though, the sky is bright against the black outlines of the trees, bright enough to find my way but not to read words.  The birds are singing as ever and I can see the passage of a plane, its white trail the only cloud among the blue-white pale of sky.  People busily leaving or arriving at Heathrow, tired with their journeying, while I am resting here.  My journeying is an inner kind, looking for meaning and fulfilment in the jobs that fall to me this day.  There is a train hoovering the distance.  Otherwise all is quiet and still.  Three weeks to Christmas.  But no, that is not right.  It is today.  I am not foreshortening time like that.  If I take and live each day, Christmas and I will be ready for each other when it comes. 

I walked down the garden through the darkness with no light on, just the diffracted light of the town sky to see by.  I have a light here for my writing but I am in a pool of dark sewn with birdsong.  Still so still, still waiting – laurel bush, fern, ivy, lavatera leaves all waiting, waiting for the light, for the errant sun, and for his newborn journey to come.  I’ve lost my dog, she stood on my lap and thrust her muzzle in my face with happy snortling sounds but she doesn’t settle down here when it is dark and cold.  She’ll have gone back to the lit kitchen and the anticipation of breakfast after ensuring there were no fox trails to chase. 

It is busy out there, I can hear rushing cars and a siren but they seem in another world.  I am in my glade of green, carpeted with leaves, hung with birdsong and now gently stirred by an enquiring breeze.  On these dark, cold days I don’t feel like coming outside, but once I’m here the magic starts.  The presence of nature is so much more restful than the man-made buzz elsewhere.  I start the day with my roots fixed, with an inner smile and open ears, and with peace.