seasons – Page 6 – Kim K. McCrea

Lunar New Year

It snowed. A wet warp threaded across the trees and garden to reflect through the tall windows and color the gray morning grayer, heavier. I swept the deck leading to the front door and the snow stuck where footsteps compressed it. The snow is melting from the eaves. It will freeze tonight.

It’s happening again, happens over and over again, turning again.

The fleece sweatshirt, the gray one I wear all winter, goes sour. My back itches. I fidget inside these winter clothes. The fleece crackles when I take it out of the clothes dryer. A wool sock is sucked into a sleeve and little sparks fly when it’s unpeeled. Stray strands of hair lean into the static, rise up expectant into the air. I wear the sweatshirt zipped up in the small cold room where I write. I wear it under a long burly down vest with full pockets that bash into coffee cups or door knobs when I turn. Time to shed a skin.

In the morning, before I speak human, I talk to the dog with hands and glances, a hula language of the body we both understand. I ask if she’s eaten her breakfast and whether raccoons came into the yard during the night. She bows and then glances in the direction of her emptied bowl. The rosemary is blooming under the snow, halfway between the winter solstice and the leveling equinox of spring. Tonight the moon is new, invisible, turning again, here at the end of the lunar year of the dog and the rising of the boar.

Time to shed a skin.

Kung Hei Fat Choy

Stone Willow

Janus is a Roman two-faced god. He looks backward upon the path traversed whilst surveying the shrouded future, a guardian of gateways and thresholds for whom this month is named. It’s a long climb up from the bottom. The mountain goat’s hooves spark striking stone hoisting a coiled serpent tail from the black waters of late December. Twenty-one days have passed since the sun stood still at solstice.

The dog and I go out in the morning seeking, in fog, in rain, in frost. We search for tracks and signs, delimit fleeting clouds, eavesdrop on the crows gossiping between the fir and the oak. Walking in the rain down the steep hill to the park before Christmas Eve, I slipped on wet leaves and pine needles. I stumbled to the pavement, falling down to one knee and the heel of my right hand. We finished our tour, Mercy’s leash loose in my left hand, and came home. I bound up the wrist in an Ace bandage to support and immobilize it. Each day it improves, but there is a click inside now close to the bone that reminds me I am not young.

The new is waiting tightly as the old falls away. Last year’s leaves lie sodden against fences and curbs, spinning slowly away in the rain showers, down the hill. Today we saw willow buds beginning to crack their pods and green tips of daffodil and crocus jaunty in the mud. Exhale now. The light returns.