feathered canyons everywhere

When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be, John Keats

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripened grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starred face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in that faery power
Of unreflecting love;-- then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.


I miss the rain, I miss that gentle patter against the window, the quiet rush of anticipation among the creeping ivy. I miss the gentleness, the softness, like a blessing into the soil. Not that strong rush, but the inevitable fall, and the perfect peace of knowing things are as they must be.

Winter is an emptiness, a silence that is not to be broken. The ground is frozen, sealed; the world sleeps. Even the snow, falling, makes no sound and falls as feathers fall, drifting to earth to shroud it again in silence. There are no trees near the apartment windows, to shelter the fat songbirds I love in this coldest of seasons, with their piping voices. All is white, and the emptiness of space yawns above.

Summer is wild heat, an explosion of growth, of propogation. A frenetic energy, one that rushes heedlessly and without thought. And even so it is a lazy time, drowsing in its own heat, too pleased with itself to be easily loved. The sun is golden, is brass, a trumpet's flare.

Nor can spring be borne, not that shy or riotous blossoming, not the delicate pastels or the crowding greenery. Beneath the overlay of color is a primal struggle to be born, to create, to shove violently forth from confinement into the light. There is no consideration, no thought, only the deepening urge to make.

In autumn it all curls in on itself, fatalistic, burning with a mind towards ash. The colors are the desperate, sad colors of a phoenix's fire, and they fade far too quickly, become brown and dead. The sky has a hardness to it unmatched by any other shade, like a barrier between the dying world and the universe.

The only place where contentment lies is the in-betweens, not one or the other. It's the first pile of flakes, the early snowdrops and the smell of earth damp with snowmelt, the warming golden days rich with promise, the first touch of coolness to the air that heralds the yellow spreading through the green. And the rain, the quiet rain and the mist that floats between worlds, that belongs to no one and nothing, that is the pause between one breath and the next.