The Gift

The air is heavy this morning, weighted with mist that assaults the skin with fairy taps, stinging nettles forcing retreat, sound magnified oddly, the bass blue and smooth, high notes lost in a libretto of shrouded warmth.

I miss the cool, the angling clouds in swift retreat as wave after wave of dank curtains draped the land, a train of filmy gauze, soothing, unsettling.  The sea echoed muted tones, millpond smooth, though long swells rippled in the pale greyness, caught out of the corner of the eye, a ghost wavering, uncertain.

It changes there, the land, the sea, the stubborn age of man, defiant.  Cold pale granite, sharp-edged, majestic from afar, scarred and wary and secretive from within its warrens, narrow-framed.  The rocks, boulders, parapets below, defying a sea that boils and seethes, sentient guardians of hidden truths.

My heart is heavy this morning, weighted with memories that assault with wicked glee, a trill of longing shot through a thrum of melancholy, fearful that those empty places, now filled, will softly fade.

I miss the sentinels of time when man and folly joined to tame with whip and chain, when blood ran free to dissipate in dank bottomless pits and ancient enmities still ring sweet and true on the keening breeze.

We trod the stony path together, leaving age and wisdom to their own devices, intent on discovery, birth and rebirth, secured against the battlements of lowering, thickening clouds. We paused, to catch our breath, free to admit that time did take its toll yet left a gift for us to prise, hidden amidst knife-edged gorse.

I miss the warm embrace, the ordered beat, time and temperance apportioned within a subtext of grace and harmony before bowing to a cacophony of brassy, disjointed chords.  I miss the rutted paths, the spareness, wariness displaced with ready grin … but most of all, I miss the gift I shared with him.