Only That Which Remains.

Despite the lack of warnings to the contrary, it didn’t snow last night.

The gas ran out, the electricity was cut and the world wide web retreated into a local configuration of beeps and flashing red lights, but never an inch of white flake manifested.

It rained though.

And then the dawn broke, the sun rose and slowly the mist twisted and trailed up from the valley below the house.

No damage had been done and he had slept peacefully.

Like a log.

A brick.

Any inanimate and senseless object.

For he had drunk his sorrows to the bottom of the bottle, watched it roll across the kitchen floor and then rolled himself under the covers on the canapé.

A fire softly had raged in the hearth.

And he had snored.

Dreamt.

Someone, his mother perhaps, spoke about their time at the river.

How they had watched the salmon leap towards their destiny as each of them would also.

Her to an unmarked grave.

He to an unremarked life.

But now he greeted the new day with new optimism.

The first day of the rest.

So!

No time to rest.

Except the time that rests.

 

 

 

A Bubbling Panacea.

She left the house in mist and returned in sunshine. She was tired, her foot hurt and she needed coffee.

She opened the door (lifting against the hinges, swollen by damp it scraped along the floor if she didn’t) and picked up the empty sack waiting to be filled with logs for the fire.

She threw it aside and sat on the only chair and started unlacing her boots.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to call out coffee machine, make me an espresso! Or simply reach out, push a button and have it so?

No.

It would not.

Slipping on her slippers (these need to be replaced, she thought. Too many holes... perhaps for Christmas) she moved through the hall to the kitchen. A small rug woven with the word hello made her smile; If she turned round, it would read goodbye. 

She didn’t.

But she started humming the melody from the song written by the Beatles.

I don’t know why you say goodbye; I say... her humming broke into words.

Hello coffee … her words broke into nonsense, and she giggled.

She continued giggling as she rinsed the coffee pot under the tap; the water was cold and she flinched in surprise even though she had seen ice on the pond earlier.

She poured coffee beans into the grinder and added one drop of the icy water. She had read someplace that this enhanced something. Taste perhaps? Aroma certainly. Her enjoyment above all.

Then she sat at the kitchen table and waited from the sound of agitation to turn to hissing to turn to bubbling.

Bubbling like a mountain brook.

Bubbling coffee, bubbling brooks... panacea for the soul.