Coming Back

Thoughts keep coming back of late afternoons with the dark wings of currawongs weaving pathways through the high branches leaving long threads of song draped across trees - the drifting skeins of woodsmoke from winter fires burning in cozy rooms, eyes fixed in hypnotic stares on dancing flames and minds meandering the past, some about to fall asleep. Thoughts keep coming back of snow falling silently in feathery flakes outside the window and in the distance, an owl's plaintive call going unanswered in the thick air. I listen to the sound of the fire, a ticking wall clock, breathings from beneath a folded quiet and the drip of melt water from somewhere in the dark. I would like to stay here but the fire is dying out and its glowing embers are nearly spent. A chill is seeping through the cracks opening between the past and the present.