Grey
The icy days that brought in the new year have faded into dull, grey memories of themselves. Two weeks ago, wrapped in layers of wool, my down jacket zipped all the way up, huddling over a hot water bottle, I thought I’d never get warm. Still, I rolled out of bed early, excited for the crunch of boots in the snow. The slip-slide of my feet on frosted, white fields and icicles on trees like Christmas baubles which set the branches jangling. All gone. January is grey and still now. The inhale before the exhale.
The air is misted breath this morning. A damp pall of low lying cloud is suspended over the furrows of muddy, brown fields. The earth, softened by the rain and melting ice, is unpleasantly needy. It sucks wetly at my boots, reluctant to let go, when I step off the path.
A single crow takes flight above me in a nightmare of black feathers and wings and beak. It’s hoarse, witch’s cackle, echoes through the naked trees. Nothing else moves except me. Not even a rustle. Even the fat wood pigeons, which normally congregate to gossip on the telephone poles, are tucked away somewhere for warmth.
My heartbeat is sluggish as I walk. It slips away from me into the liminal, long grey space of January. Slow, slow. It’s not quite ended and has not yet started. That’s January.
Brown
The wind has stripped the trees of all their leaves and left them naked, exposed. Unashamed of their spindly limbs, they raise thin arms and boney fingers in defiant gesture to the gunmetal sky. The earth beneath their long feet has been churned by the rain, by boots just passing through, into a slurry. Ragged, patchy grass holds on determinely. All is a sea of mud, spiked with the brown bones of patient things, waiting.