The Word-a-day Writing Challenge

Day Twenty-Nine: Salal

It's beginning to snow. Winter licks at the windows. Loose Tyvek on the southeast side retaliates in loud snaps against the sky. Time passes. Through CBC Radio Two's Classical Morning, in an attic in the woods, I trim the leaves no one will smoke and contemplate. I take breaks for water, juggling and to look through the window at bald maples and birch, rock and cliff, violin and piano, woodsmoke. Get more of what you need, the flyer by the stove reads, but I don't think it's available in an aerosol spray or fat free and carb conscious. Mozart. Bach. Pine. Tamarac. A dusting of snow. Traci saying, I hope you find what you're looking for out there, and wondering what that is. The sound of footsteps on a country road, snow-packed and creaking, far from cedar and salal and the silence of fog. Here, it's another kind of silence, an unfamiliar one. Foxes and star-shine. A moon that lights up the whole pass, and barely another person for miles. It makes me think of Rumi. Forty early mornings. More of what I need.