Saturnalia

Watching West Brom in the Winter

Here, you are most yourself, child-like and grounded.  Back to your roots.

There’s a Chaucerian rhythm to the walk to the football ground, voices from other ages and language from times past.  The same comments across generations, the passed on wisdom and ancient philosophy.

And then on the pitch, the old poetry of movement.  Brutal and balletic.  The taunting chants ring out and they’re silly and they’re real and they’re true.

This is nothing, this is everything.  Banal and beautiful, the act rises above itself.

We are here, caught in the moment.  Everything has been said that needs to be said.

But one, cold December night, watching the snowflakes glitter glamorously in the floodlights, a moment of magic.  Something familiar is made secret and unknowable, adding an icy resolve to the players’ passion.

The snow in the fire.  The fire in the snow.  

***

Hearth

Hmmm, smell that smoke.  Kind of sweet and spicy and, cough, acrid.  That’s the smell of another year burning out.

Flickering flames draw you in.  Watch the memory of what was take on new shapes, turn into story, always moving, morphing into something else, and then, nothing.

The colours take you deeper into narrative, orange to yellow to blue, a flash of green and then glowing red, red, red, a touch of white.  But don’t forget the glorious black.   Ah, carbon, that takes us back to basics.  We’re all made of the same stuff, even if we like to imagine we’re something different to the rest.

Chuck another stick on the fire, no logs; it’s been a quiet year.  Up it goes in a blaze of glory.  That must have been that wonderful summer.  Watch how it shimmers with the happiest colours, orange, yellow, and…it’s gone.  Ah well.

On goes another, a wicked wiggle of green.  Unusual, must have been the month when I was in love with that stranger on the bus.  What was I thinking?  So inappropriate, hormones I guess.  Red and green never should be seen.

Oh, a bit of blue in that one, a lot of blue if I think about it.  Best to burn that up.

On and on and oh, chuck the lot on, and, my basket of sticks is empty.   What a blaze, hot, hot, hot on the cheeks.  Reminds me I’m alive.

Now it really is burning out; lower, lower, gone and into the dark.  Darker and darker in this longest of long nights.  When the light finally arrives I’ll sweep the hearth clean.  I love the lightness of ash, what we all turn back into, one puff and off we go, floating on air.

The grate will soon be clean and black and cold, cold as death.  Not dead though, just waiting for the new fire that will come.  It will come.

Domestic Detail in the House of Dreams