Migration

You have left it too late to go and take wing or haul yourself across the chilly mountains. Already the mornings are thick with frost and melt slowly in the shadows of a fleeing sun. You should have gone when first you felt the distances grow and fill with silence, when a cold indifference settled the trees as all turned inward and let go of what had once reached towards a welcoming sky. The land is bare now, hollowed out to hold the husks of things outgrown and left behind. Vacated shells twitch like puppets gloved by a bitter wind. You have lost the knowledge of where to go, that other place, not here - but somewhere else, known only by the restlessness that you sometimes feel pacing the narrowing confines of yourself.