L'aura del Campo

Onion skin [169.101]

"Onion skin"

deep dry thoughts
waft of tea

The quilted sky lay a soft grey pall over the valley. Long gone the Season of Bluebird Song, the days of trout jumping and fly-hatch mere lingering whiffs like the cloying perfume of lust-filled regrets.

I move sloth-like through the morning, the mountains' razor edge obscured by smoke, the hills too hard to climb in choking stillness.

I sip hot tea in the bakery, my hands darkened by the now waning sun, my thoughts transparent as onion skin.

What had stranded me in this ashy hell? Why had I left the deep dark loam of the tall-grass prairie where my roots slept peacefully through winter, woke up to blue skies and thunder, stretched for water every summer. Coughing, I thirst for a drop of rain.

Amused by the metal taste of my worn out glasses dangling from dry lips, I day-dream to the whirr of the fan hanging from this bakery's ceiling, barely aware of the locals' just-another-Sunday-morning chatter, wonder where I'll go next, when I'll move on.

new ink
on onion skin
drying

© Kåre Enga [169.101] 23 September 2012

Note: had just finished Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge. The prompt for my "Gems in a Jar" #4 were: quilted, soft grey, whirr, cloying perfume, sloth-like, onion skin, metal (taste), still (air), hot tea, deep dark loam, (season of) bluebird singing, (month of) fly hatch.

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