Winter Solstice

 

He thinks about her.

He is sipping red wine. It fills his mouth with grape and his heart with hope.  Outside it is still raining.

Earlier he had walked the hounds in a brief respite from the deluge.  There had been a delayed monsoon waiting in the dying-leaved trees.

A hidden sun had set invisibly over his grey, sodden, dripping village before four o’clock. The afternoon had been swallowed up by night without a whimper

It is the shortest day.

He lives by the seasons and can already feel the change. The days will lengthen from now. It is a clean, beckoning, hungry new page.

He will write her name on it.

He does not know who she is. And yet he already senses her presence in his life.

He cannot be sure if they have yet made contact, chased shadows, crossed borders, traded smiles, touched hands, exchanged truths, offered up words, or painted pictures on a blank canvas.

He is unable to tell if they are already gently familiar or are completely unconnected strangers.

Yet he is certain, at this change of the solstice, that she is there.  For him.

So he takes another sip and leans back into the soft, comfortable leather of his chair.

He can almost smell her scent on his fingers.

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I was certain I had posted a short piece some time ago inspired by the winter solstice which, in the northern hemisphere, is today. I eventually found it under the title ‘Her scent’. I had actually written it in 2012. Time flies.

Much has changed since then. Sadly both of the hounds mentioned in the piece have died. The village has been swapped for an even smaller one. And I have left behind a business life in order to write and do other things.

But it seems to capture the day and the time. So last year I posted it again, with a new title to celebrate the day. But with the same art. I think it meant something to me at the time. Perhaps posting it will be a Winter Solstice tradition.

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© the author writing as Romantic Dominant

Painting by Thomas Saliot