Photo: Jez Timms on Unsplash
In the window
Reflected
Shine from times long
Ago,
As the fire
Resplendent
Warmed cold hands from the
Snow,
And kids’ eyes
Filled with wonder
Twinkled joy in the
Glow.
Elders, too
Filled with stories
Even they’re yet to
Know.
Lights aglow
Hope aflow.
For the dVerse quadrille challenge: glow
Morning crept
With cold
Rays,
To frost dress
A new
Day,
With the chill
Soon to
Be,
Preview of
Winter’s
Fee.
For the Sunday Stills photo challenge: Chill
The sky was blue when they headed out. Crisp, cold, dry, and sunny, it was the perfect day for some easy back-country skiing.
They planned to be home by lunch.
They did not plan on the weather turning. On clouds so low and so fast that they’d reached zero visibility in almost no time at all.
Joshua could see that Daniel was two steps away from panic. That would not do. Not with the children with them.
“Take the rear,” Joshua ordered.
If Daniel frowned at his bossy tone, the heavy fog covered it. Joshua stood his ground, literally, till Daniel maneuvered his skis so he was behind the two youngest. Good enough.
Joshua took a breath and tried to get a read from the weather. It was probably best to shelter in place till the fog lifted, but if the weather was about to get worse, it was better they got back before conditions deteriorated further.
There was no way to know for sure, but his gut’s tightening signaled that the latter option was the one to take. His hand tightened around the compass hanging from his pocket. He’d need it.
“Mark! Sally!” he cupped his hands and called for the two older children who, true to form, used any break in skiing for a snowball fight. The wind snatched his voice and he realized that it, too, had gotten worse in the last few minutes.
“Daniel, get them!” he shouted. “Timmy, Ronny, Sid, and Shirley, stay close to me.”
Shirley nodded and clung to his arm. “Are we going to Avalanche?” her voice shook.
“Avalanche isn’t a place, honey,” he replied over the thunder in his chest. “It’s when a lot of snow slides down the mountain. We’re not in an avalanche zone, so you don’t need to worry.”
“But it’s all white,” she sniffled, “and I’m cold.”
“I know, little one. The weather turned on us. We’ll get everyone in line and we’ll get moving and you’ll soon get warm. Timmy, Ron, and Sid, you okay back there?”
The boys nodded unconvincingly.
Daniel herded Mark and Sally closer to the rest and sandwiched them between the younger children and himself.
“Let’s go!” Joshua yelled, his voice barely audible in the whistling wind. “Keep your eyes on the person in front of you. Daniel, use your whistle if you need help.”
Daniel lifted his ski in response.
Joshua concentrated on the compass, on the next few steps. Everything he loved in this world was behind him. The white settled all around and he felt small. Like when he was ten and the world had come down around him in a tumble.
He shook the memory away.
This time he was not going to Avalanche.
He was going to get them — all of them — home.
For Kreative Kue 239
Photo: Ales Krivec on Unsplash: Vintgar, Slovenia
The Radovna pooled itself and waited for her ablution. Still. Clear. Shattering in its beauty and perfection.
Everything she was not.
Hers was more the unfettered rush, cutting gorges, collecting all manner of debris, and lugging along tumbled things that poked their heads out of the milky froth of living.
There were no still ponds in her being.
She looked at the icicles suspended from rocks above the freezing water. They were guarding it.
From beings that did not deserve to be cleansed.
Like herself.
Hom and Boršt rose above the gorge, patient and unbending. The beech trees on the slopes, stripped bare for winter, rustled as they waited to witness her own naked skin.
Her eyes lifted to the bridge, though she expected no one on it. The area was closed to tourists in the winter. Only the locals came, alone, to seek absolution in the Radovna’s icy bowl.
Photo by Tobias Bjørkli on Pexels.com
They woke
To see
The painted sky,
Where spirits
Skated
Angel-winged
On light and
Turquoise dye,
And looped the
Heavens
And the earth
Like stars
Learning to fly.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Aurora in 28 words
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
The birds spiral
‘Round the spire
And the bells peal
Half and whole,
As the sky paints blue
Horizons
In a neighborhood
For all.
For the Lens-Artist Challenge: Around the neighborhood
Photo: Amitai Asif
In the depth
Of the winter,
Where so much
Appears dead,
Plan ahead.
For there are places
Where nature,
Finally rain fed,
Blooms into
Fields
Of red.
For the One Word Sunday Challenge: Red
For Cee’s FOTD
Photo: Karen Forte
Pause, and
Let your mind wander
In waking reverie
To the places where
Tomorrow’s seeds
Are sleeping
Underneath the snowy
Ground,
Wrapped in the arms
Of memories
Of days
Long passed
And others
Yet to come.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Woolgathering in 36 words
Photo: Amitai Asif
“Be like a flower,” she said,
Wrinkles creasing like sun
‘Round her eyes.
“Be like cabbage, too!”
And she laughed
At my confusion and
Touched a calloused hand
To my cheek
For the umpteenth loving time.
“Bloom alone does not fill stomachs,”
She explained
And the years without
Flickered sad behind her smile
But did not interfere.
“Cabbage blooms as pretty as any,
Yet unlike most who wilt
At summer’s end,
It will hold goodness at the ready
To nourish you through winter.”
“Be like a flower, then,” she smiled.
“And like a cabbage, too.
For it will sustain you:
Bland or spiced or hot or cold
Until the snow melts
And you have lived to a new spring
And can, one day, grow old.”
Photo: Inbar Asif
For the Six Word Saturday Challenge
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