It is the time of year when the sun loses its crisp starch on things which draw themselves out far from their seat on the earth, leaning at an awkward angle toward evening. It is a time when you might see a woman walking alone along a cold trail, shrouded in the shadows of barren trees. The bridge casts a dark stain across the water and a grey heron calmly glides overhead, its ghostlike other skimming the ground.
There is an emptiness to winter, as if all the sand of time had drained away, and the glass jar aches to break, as if breaking might lead to relief at the end of a year painfully distended with days. A woman walking on a cold trail is an empty hour glass aching to break, a fleeting shadow, a ghost.
The sun illuminates the water and in the glow the fish and turtles appear. There is nothing more than this but a child sleeping in a warm bed on a cold night, or the vastness of an early morning solitude, or the shattering glass of an abrupt freedom that calls a woman to walk alone in winter on a trail filled with shadows.
