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Island Blog – Inscape

Today was modified. After the busy dogsitting day, I knew I was going to allow myself to phew, a lot. Although I woke fine and dandy, I always do, as it is fantabulous just to wake at all when so many do not, I had a weary in my bones and an oldness sort of thinking. There’s a swingbat on that sort of thinking, because I am old and happy about it but I do not like the slump of it, the challenge of it, (thanks Julie) and, although I refuse to couch, or potato, myself, I confess to thoughts that beckon. You could just flop. You could just allow. You could, trust me, you could. I hear that voice, but I cannot take said voice seriously. I am the daughter of a life, of strife, of trauma and regret. I have witnessed and avoided, I have run away and returned, I have no weapons, no desire for revenge nor violence but I have lived a life that, on reflection, only I could have lived. And that thinks me.

I awoke to cats on, not my tin, but my sunroom roof, cats running, not mine, but my neighbour’s, beautiful tortoiseshells and great mousers. I no longer hear the squeaks of the mouse family within my drystone walls, no longer do they keep me awake at night as they scurry about their ordinary lives of survival in my loft, no longer do I watch them rush across what is to them a great divide as they seek fallings of bird seed. I am mousey silent, and there’s a think. Is it ok that these lovely cats are keeping the mice down, or is it ghastly annihilation? Short term, and don’t we always think this way? It thinks me.

A sudden was a young woman stopping at my door with her dog. Fancy a walk? she asked, and I was in. We walked and talked, I said I can’t go far, and she said no problem, just tell me when you want to go back. Safe in that support, I found strength in my legs and breath as we meandered around her life and mine and we both caught that connection which is everything. Neither of us fit into a category, neither want labels, both have known trauma and difficulties. Well, who hasn’t? I believe that our key is to recognise this and to change ourselves somehow. I am further ahead than she, I know this. Our inscape tells us who we were back then, the business success, the marital contributor, the mother, father, friend. We did well. Yes, we made mistakes, ones we may still hold onto as ID, but we are somewhere else now.

And that can mean lost. I know it. ID is a security. When that is taken away, we can become amoeba, floating aimlessly in our loss of identity. What I have learned is to notice that loss, to halt those aimless thoughts and to challenge them. I may be not who I thought I was, but the very ‘was’ of this lost thing is of my past. Can I let it go, that ID of whom I was and whom I believed in for so long? I am always working on that one.

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Island Blog – The Flying Things

I had a dog today. Well, it’s better than a hissy fit or a conniption and certainly more rewarding. She is a black spaniel puppy, well trained and, for the first time, away from her human parents. She knows me, but that is so not the same thing as being left with me, not in her world. At first she was anxious, a lot of looking out of windows and eye-snapping me every time I moved from one room to another, a whole load of following and looking and those eyes were laden with doubt and insecurity. She is beautiful and soft and sweet and I reassured her a thousand times, creaking down on my hunkers to eye-level her, telling her ssshhhh, we’re ok, you’re safe and so on. I proffered toys, kept since my wee Poppy died, and for visiting dogs, and she rushed everywhere, with a pig, or a bird or a hedgehog or a something that has no name I know in her mouth, that spangle tail wagging like a metronome. We walked a little and she was keen to fly. I could feel that in my old legs, less under my own control than they were before. Before what, or when? I think since all this dying struggled me, and cancer too. That’s a something I flap away as if it was a mere cold, but obviously, my body is resulting. I doubt that is good grammar but, as you know I love to sideswipe the rules on that.

Around 1pm I was knackered and that thought me. She, the Spangle, asked nothing more than cuddles. She made no barks, chewed nothing, responded with cocked head, ears full forward whenever I spoke. I could have said Fancy a trip to Ibiza? and that tail would have told me Yes! However, I knew I needed to lie down. So we went upstairs and I did, inviting her onto the bed. She jumped and landed right on me, her paws either side of my face, her eyes staring right into mine. I looked back and she remained with that looking thing until I got the giggles, initiating a whole shenanigan of mischievous palaver, and I just knew rest was wrest from my grasp.

The sun was bright with a hail storm up his backside. We watched it, the hail, storm by, and then we walked again. We dillyed and dallied, endless sniffs abounding as the wind, latent, for now, still creaked the old trees. I switched back to hear their voices. You only speak in the wind, I said, and they creaked back, like old friends, like old memories. We are quiet in the calm, just like you, they said. It is only in troubling times that we need to speak out, much like you will do in your own troubled times, because nobody ever learns a damn thing when everything is easy. Yet, beyond the easy, In the after of an assault, when someone creaks and speaks from experience, there will be someone else who needs to hear, and who will catch the words.

And then, in my looking up, I saw the flying things. I haven’t seen them for many cold months. Insects in a whirl, a lift, coasting the sun warmth, a spin of hope. I watched them whilst the Spangle sat looking too, with no idea what she was seeing. But I did. I saw. And then we moved on.

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Island Blog – The Bog and Lifting

Mostly, I am coloured up and cheerful as a chipmunk. Then comes a day when it is even a pain in the arse to get dressed. I don’t like these days, and they know it, because I can hear them grumbling and muttering each time I push myself on and up. And I do. I think it’s because I know about being in the bowels of a depression and how vicious and controlling it is. Thankfully this time is way back in my past, but the body holds the score and we both remember the control of it, the way invisible octopus arms smothered me, held me down and down some more until I forgot who I was, and why I was. The scars are there somewhere and when the past puts its finger on the trigger, I tense, I remember, and my inner fighter rises, stronger now, powerful, even if I am not. She will protect me but only because I call her up from sleep, and that is the key.

When someone has known the ghastly of a mental bog, the knowing never goes away. But, once lifted from said bog, something rises as a teacher. Do you want to learn, survive, bloom again? If, as in my case, the answer is yes-but, then out comes the sunshine of hope. Yes…..But….? Indeed. The but bit is important because you are up there, Oh Teacher and I am slimy and hopeless and full of self-hatred and remorse. How on earth will those beliefs change? Ah, says the Teacher. Just follow me. And I did, and I learned and I was a keen student. I remember faking cheerful, faking ‘sorted’ because in my day, depression was something to be ashamed of, something imagined. ‘This is all in her head’ they said, and they were right, but the dismissive way it was whispered in corridors, was not right at all. As if I had manufactured these days of darkness and fear, just for attention.

I am not depressed now. I have learned much over the years, discovered many wonderful inroads into intelligent and compassionate support, walked them, learned the routes to feeling worthwhile, important, valued. T’is a goodly map. I also know, and believe in, the tactics for arising from the bog. I understand that the bog is still there, but I have found footholds. I know where the Pull Grass grows, that which I can grab a hold of, should I slide down. I have learned the weather patterns around a possible slide, and to avoid going out at such times. And, avoidance tactics are pivotal. On days such as this, when I can’t be arsed et wotwot, I am careful to do exactly what I want to do. I may cancel a meeting if it insecures me. I may decide to stay behind my four stone walls, light a fire, read or listen to an audio book. After all, who is judging me for my hiding, my declining, my indulgence? Only me. The critics of my past are long dead, all of them, parents, teachers, husband, so those voices are just dust in the wind. I know this now.

But, when such days wake me, confabulate me, I cannot dismiss them. A day is a day, after all, hours of it. But I can cock a snook at it, swish my sword, say I Am Important, I Have a Choice, and, most importantly, I Am Me (and that’s just dandy). I may not do this or that, those things my imaginary ‘yous’ keep banging on about, and, even if it feels odd at first, the more I do this, the bigger I grow and the further I walk from that damn bog. And my judges.

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Island Blog – A Lift into Sparkle

Oh my gosh was I tired today. I remember so many people answering me ‘tired’ when I asked How are you?, and, I confess, I could feel irritation rise in my gut. I wanted to push for a single positive in their life, almost to shake them. Oh, what I have learned since those days! I guess its experiential compassion. And, more, that, the pretence that life is always wonderful, is good, in balance. But an overdose of ‘wonderful’ is, frankly, both unreal and impossible and therefore not to be believed. However, I was brought up this way. You left your ‘stuff’ at home and, out there, you were upbeat and cheerful. There was a dichotomy in that, nonetheless because once back home the lode re-landed with a big heavy thump and nobody, including me had addressed the ‘stuff’ or even knew how to. I heard it chortle like a goblin as it held me in stasis, thrilling with its power and control. For years I avoided asking the How Are You question, or asking it whilst in full flight, not waiting for the answer, afeared that involving meant solving. Not now. Now I know what it is like to feel lonely, lost and scared, my ‘stuff’ all consuming, the goblin growing into a giant. Perhaps that is where they were, those ones I hurtled past in my busy and productive life, so called. Perhaps, had I stopped to ask, to listen, to lay a hand on another’s, to say I’m here, I might have made a difference to them. Although I could never sort their stuff, not even my own, that act of friendship just might have lifted them a little at a pivotal moment in their lives whilst taking nothing away from my own. In fact, it might have shifted my perception and that, I have learned, is always a good thing. A self-centred life is all very well, but nobody learns a thing from such a life, including the person living it.

I am just returned from a visit to the cancer centre in Glasgow. The hotel is near the clinic, minutes away in fact. I found Google maps and did the whole thing of current location and destination. But, then, I couldn’t work out how to hold my phone. This way takes me left, that way, right. I could wander for days if I don’t get this right. Here comes someone, airpods in, moving purposefully. We make eye contact. Can you help me please, I ask, with a smile. I get one back and I can feel the warmth of it. He stops. Sure, he says. He must be all of 25, and in a hurry. Yet still, he is kind. I may have electric blue hair, but he will have clocked the wrinkles. I’m heading for the cancer clinic, I say, oncology department. He melts. You say cancer and everyone melts, as I do. I think it is up here…..I wave my arm across most of Glasgow. He grins. Yes, but bring that arm in. It is just above us, up that wee hill, just a couple of minutes. That’s the main entrance. I thank him and we share an eye smile. He could be my son and he is kind and he stopped for me. Braced and re-energised, I march up said hill and down again, a little, down toward the entrance, where everyone looks down. Of course they do. Whether going in or coming out, there is a cancer in there somewhere.

Through the doors and I am assailed with signs, people moving by, more people than I see in a week on the island. Nothing fits with my instructions. I swing round and back again, looking daft. Can I help you? asks a woman with a badge. Oh, yes please, I am here for a CT scan. Radiography, she says, and points to the big sign I obviously missed. I march on, more corridors, more possible rights and lefts. I ignore them all, arriving at a reception desk where I am greeted with a big smile and a welcome, as if I was the DJ for their party. It chuckles me and I love it. I give my details and am guided to take a seat, which I take amongst others who look up through sad eyes and down again. I am here with cancer. They have cancer. We are all scared.

I politely stick my butt in a chair and settle beneath the ghastly tube lighting. We are slightly off from the main drag, one that hums with passing nurses, technicians, equipment, patients in wheelchairs, patients in rolling beds. We all watch. We all thank our lucky stars, for now. After fifteen minutes of a silence that begs, longs to evolve into chat, I know it is I who will do this. I am the DJ. How can I begin, I wonder. It thinks me, a lot, and then I find something. Does anyone know if it’s ok to keep a mobile on? (I know the answer, but that’s not. the point). Oh, you can connect, a woman says, she, with her husband in a wheelchair, You just look on the wall, there’s the wifi and the password. I thank her and rise, crossing the divide. I am now respectfully between her and another man with a stick. I smile at both, casting a rainbow. I sign in, not that I give a damn about wifi right now, and see my Poppy dog as my screensaver. I pivot to the woman, show her. Oh, she says, Oh, and asks me to show her husband, which I do. He tells me their border terrier died 12 weeks ago and they are both lost without him. I say how sorry I am and that my own wee girl is also dead, not so long ago. I ask questions about their dog, how they feel, and warmth rises. Then I go back to my seat and ask the young woman beside me if she has a dog. She has, she had, she also mourns her wee yorkie, is completely lost without her. We all talk dog for a while, and if I look, I can see the connections multiply across the thoroughly scrubbed floor of a cancer waiting room. It’s like theNorthern Lights and as beautiful. The last man in, the one with the stick is yet to be drawn in. So, I say, do you have a dog? He beams. I do, a German Shepherd. A beautiful girl. Tell me about her, I say, leaning forward, and he does and every single one of us is thoroughly engaged.

And, despite what any of us are going through or facing, I could see tiredness lift into a sparkle.

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Island Blog – Sharing love on a Train

After a wonderful few nights with my grand girls, I stepped onto the train for a CT scan at the Beatson Cancer Clinic. I like the name. It has Beat in its construct. And, the evening before, I was teaching my grand girls beatboxing. At least, I think that’s the term. They, like all the other grandlings in my big family, in some way or other, are into music and beat. We played with mouth sounds, many of which, in ordinary life, are advisably contained. A hiss, a growl, a guttural whaaaa, etc, but as beat, anything, pretty much, goes. We walked beneath a closed sky, watched what we could see of the filming of Outlander at Doune Castle, squelched through mud, passed horses and actors and a medieval film set. It was exciting just to be there.

Then The train. My lovelies sent me off with kisses and promises through windows long needing a clean, but, I’m guessing, it has rained for yonks, the tracks luffing up mud and whatnot for some weeks, months. Nonetheless, within the confines of this efficient tube of transport, I made friends, not least because my short hair is electric blue. It’s like an invitation to conversation, and, I understand, it’s not for everyone, but it is just that for me. A lovely woman up-beat from me (in other words, the next set of seats) eye-glanced me, and I smiled. When she came up to me, just before her stop, I knew she felt safe, and I knew it was my smile that invited her in. She could have been going to divorce proceedings, a difficult meet, or to a wonderful job, but she came in. I love your hair, she said, stranger to stranger. It tells me something I may have forgotten in the crazy of my life. I smiled again, and nodded. She’ll do the rest. Then, in slid a young man. He was polite, respectful and we did the smile thing. He worked on something, paper and pen. Then, from a tap behind, he responded to a woman who couldn’t make her mobile do something she wanted. He respectfully helped her, and after this was done, he turned back to me and I said, That was a gift?

He said, no, and yes. I love to help. He asked about me. I said I was heading for a CT scan pre radiotherapy. He said nothing, but his eyes said everything. When he left, he bowed and took my hand, his young brown one in my old white one. A moment I will remember, even if I never got his name.

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Island Blog – Inspiradiation and a Zap Map

Many things inspire me, people too. Something said out loud or communicated through eyes, and in silence, but received, nonetheless. Moments, sounds, lyrics, intuitions, experiences, and many more besides. If I catch these inspirations, like butterflies in a net, they all hold a beauty and intensity, a teaching. But, only if I catch them. I know how it is to barge on through doorways and over sills or along pathways with only a to-do list. Chased by Time, and always just this side of utterly exhausted, it is easy to miss much. When focus is on the familiar, the to-do list, the endless corridors leading to yet another bloody doorway that opens on to more tasks only I can complete, intuition and the chance of inspiration getting so much as a look-in, is unlikely at best. Not now, however, now that I am old and alone and when I have endless time to catch butterflies in the net of my mind. Beautiful things, butterflies, although sometimes I might catch an earwig or a toad, so broad is my sweep. But those critters also bring opportunities for reflection. Perhaps that throwaway comment or that too-quick turn-away upset someone, and this earwig or this toad also have something for me to take in and to consider.  Not all catchings are pleasant, at first. Of course, the key with anything I catch is to eventually release it, be it the beautiful butterfly of epiphany, or the unattractive and dully coloured body of a uncomfortable realisation. One which demands humble action. 

Soon, I am offski to the cancer clinic for a ‘planning CT scan’, where the professionals will create their Zap Map. Through the wonders of technology, they will see precisely where to point the radiotherapeutic laser, ensuring, so they tell me, that all trace of cancer, if any is lurking, will be zapped unto death. Five days is all, and not even the whole of those five days, but a few minutes. Although unpleasant reactions can list bigly horrors, not one of them will affect me, because nothing ever has before. I am blest with ridonculous health, and a big inspiration net, always to hand. I will pay attention to everything and everyone, sweeping a wide catchment area wherever I go. Across the road, in a bus queue, in the hospital amongst others being zapped, the nurses, the doctors. Inside the hotel, the lift, on the stairs, through a window, along the street, butterflies abound. I just know it. And I will return, as I always do, humbled at what I see. A homeless girl, a weary bus driver, someone I meet in a doorway, a harrassed business man in a big rush, a fraught mother weighed down by a cling of children. I will hear sounds I never hear in this wild place. The chatter of a train on the tracks, a colourful hue of voices in languages I cannot speak, the cut of someone’s jib, the smell of exhaust fumes, of perfume, takeaway food and so on. And I will sweep it all in, catch it in my net.

Even the radiation will inspire me, for I am always curious like Alice, eager to learn, not facts but what is really means to be human, to be wonderful, lost, broken, keen, kind, and an integral part of all those ties, colours and stories that bind us together.  

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Island Blog – Blue Hair

I just dyed my short crop electric blue, full strength. I’ve done it before, but only in sneaks and tweaks colour barely there. In my experience of living, there was always the threat of judgement, and yet the rebel streaked through me, causing a flipping hooha, that hooha gathering strength like a right bloody turmoil. I had no idea what to do with it in the days, years, within which I felt I had no control, no point. Ever since, when I have cropped, dyed crazy colours, I have always ‘almost’ done the job. Red woke up as pink (not a good look for me), Green, yellowed, Blue became grey. I was too young for grey. What I wanted was change. I couldn’t do nothing (love the. way language shifts) about the season, the winter, the discontent, thanks Will S. The content frails and fails as the rains and dark comely ins. We straggle, or I do, after fricken endless coldy times, under shrapping waterfalls of pellet rain, sending the wee birds up and away or down and under. It seems to have that hold on continuity, one I recall sensing from a prefect at my boarding school, she who could sit and stare and judge for so long, that I wondered, as did my friends, if her bowels ever got the chance to open. And it was all about punishment and judgement and the power she held.

Back to my blue hair. I may well go, Oh Shit, in the first mirror check tomorrow, but I doubt it, because, this time, I did it, I went the whole hog. And not even me will judge. Its a game, a fun thing, it won’t do damage. It thinks me. Born into a girl time when we were, not quite, expected to marry well and bugger off, Ithe tail of that comet is still in many skies. The expectations, the importance of sons, it existed and thrived in my childhood. Not so much in my family, thank the goodness, but blue hair on the eldest sister might have hesitated the welcomes. Actually, I remember a few of those.

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Island Blog – Radio Gaga

I thought it was Thursday. Certain, I was, and, so much so that I moved my car out of the way for the wood delivery. I also prepped for my counsellor zoom, but, as time twingled on and no lorry appeared through the frantic blur of 60mph wind plus a sideswipe of blattering rain, I did begin to question myself. Then, when I received no link from my counsellor at five to the hour, I could feel a wondering. It began in my toes. and rose up through legs, past butt, and on up through my spine. I laughed, I did. I could be in Thursday, or any day and still be completely present without having a scooby about my connection to the wotwot of days. Days just ‘day’ on. Some of them super slow, like slugs leaving a behinding slime, some cantering on like deer in rifle sight. I never know, never have any control over the wotwot. I can feel drowny, as if I am out of control, or light above the damn waters of it all, in my boat and with my oars and rollicks in place. I know I am not alone in this, met too many people who swivel from a rooted calm to a swindling gale that uproots and fells a body, one with stories yet to tell, a body still determined to ‘alive’, no matter the fall.

Once I got the hang of it being Wednesday, I kind of liked the feeling. It is, after all, Winnie the Pooh’s favourite day and I am fond of the way he takes on life, as if every moment is a foundling, one he will raise it into something wonderful. It also freed me, from wood lorry delivery and that is a thing in itself. The wood bag is crane -lifted over my fence and immediately subject to the slashing rains of the now, in our now. I have a wheelbarrow. I have me, but the me in this scenario is not the strong woman of old. Why do we say that? I want to write, The old woman of young. Anyway, it will arrive tomorrow, and I will move my car again, and will make the barrow trip from open rain-soaked bag to my wood store, and then I will be happy and chuffed and puffed and warm.

It thinks me, and I am happy that I got days wrong inside a week that doesn’t bother me, nor I it. However, soon I go for radiotherapy, just five days, a CT scan before, and I do need to note the days of travel that deliver me into the laser zone of cancer zap. I should have gone last week, but last week was a frickin wild nightmare, no ferry, huge slamdunk gales, punching way beyond their pay grade, and an earthquake that rattled my windows. 

Talking to my lad in Africa, he who knows I am Gaga to of my many grandkids, connected radiotherapy with Gaga. We laughed a lot at the connection.

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Island Blog – Dungarees and Cake

I know we are in the middle of a right frickin blast of an angry storm. The MET office is in a panic and everyone is warned of death. Although the catastrophising is ridiculous, I am very aware of how traumatic this storm, and all other storms, are for those in the crosshairs. There is no diminish in that. It must be horribly real for many. I know this, am aware of this, as I walk beneath bonkers trees, swiping at the sky as in an attempt to slice the wind and, thus, to cut it down into bite size pieces. I notice the limbs agrounded, bits of what once was a whole, lying scattered and looking up at me as I stomp by through the mudfast track. I’m sorry, I whisper to them, as my yellow boots lift over each one.

The night noise is frightening. Punching fists of muscled wind at my glass, I start, awaken, freeze and imagine. Settling, slowly, I bring in the narrative. I am safe, I am warm, I have four stone walls around me and the dark is not a threat. I lie back on my pillows, sip water, listen. Well that’s an error of judgement, because the shriek of that damn banshee is punishing my window vents into submission, forcing their little openings into a desperate whistling breath, and it sounds me like a caust of ghouls on the wild. I stop listening.

So, and tell me this. How is it that my thought in all this melee of ghastly, not for me as yet, but for so many others, is ‘Will I wear dungarees tomorrow at our library meet?’ I have no answer to that, once I have clocked the inappropriateness (good lord what a wordy word) of my thought. But, I am guessing, that most of us, faced with the face-sure of what is happening, and what will happen more so, and again so,tor and so and so and so, will twist home to the familiar. All of us, UK wide are in the shit of this. But, is it shit? That wonders me. Many may say yes, and do nothing about it. Many may say yes and find ways to work with what is happening to us all. Some will be lost beyond the beyond of it all. Some will surprise. 

It is happening people. Meantime, I am going to our library meet in dungarees and with cake.

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Island Blog – A Softening, Perhaps

On the track, the snow is dibbled, pecked and scribbled. Footprints slideside with others, creating giant boots, the skitter of bird, claw of dog, a circle and a stop. The pines, spruce, fir and thuja overhang the track, endless fingers luffing in a breeze that whispers thaw, falling drips to pepper the snow, and deeply. I see that other walkers have, mostly, kept to the midships of this snowfull track, each side flattened by big ass tyres, pressed into a slipslide. 

When a thaw is coming, it makes noise. My neighbours will notice that noise, as snow slides and crumps to the ground, but I won’t because I have no insulation in my loft. Their roof holds the snow. Mine shucks it off. It laughs me, when I’m not worrying about it. As I walk, I can hear the trees register a change, a lift from the stasis of snowfreeze. They creak and groan like old men lifting from a chair (or being told to do the washing up) and I stop to listen and to lift. You old buggers have been standing here since 1840. You have seen so much, heard so much, learned so much, withstood so much. I know you can keep on keeping on. I imagine an eye roll at my retreating back.

Turning into the Fairy Woods, where the beeches ghost, I notice where the thaw is slow.  Needle spread underfoot, no birds, no song beyond the scrawing screech of a jay, the ground is still hard, still snow covered. It wonders me. Does the earth feel the warmth of snow cover, as would a polar explorer, Inuit, Bear? Perhaps it is kind of cosy below that duvet of ice crystals, soft and almost motherly. Usually we have slice-rain, sleet and unkind slapdunk. Perhaps you like this new thing? I ask and something rustles.

Rounding, I tramp the track homeward, keeping to the midship. Younger trees stand here, scalped and ghosted but just resting, really. They will return in Spring. On this track, the thaw is more obvious, not on the track itself, but beside it. The dance of endless birds leave their prints, the pock mark of thaw-drips pepper the besides. Everything was covered yesterday, covert, hiding truths. Today, a softening. An opening, perhaps.