Winter sleep

Black of winter has set in, with those heavy, long dreams. Weak narrative, shadow characters... little girl under pier; boy with darkened head rising up to catch a ball: Little kids awaiting baseball practice and across the way a gently grinning soldier, an enemy, deciding to hold fire at point blank range. Then in the hour of the wolf, it's as though everything could collapse just like that, every bit of confidence that you exist could fall in.

Such is death here, here and in these winter coffin sleeps. It's so close, just the slightest touch away. I keep thinking it's the volcano, or the hollow boulders outside the front door, something in the land itself. But then you get up and there's the smoke-mist floating above the town, darker stuff coming from the barracks, and there's the moor at your feet, everything appearing as always. And somewhere out in the moor, sitting with his coan, a middle aged man reciting the sound effects of war, long remembered from childhood.