Solstice
Yesterday - near Sand Hall On the morning of this winter solstice, I lay in bed for an hour after I had woken up. Together, the quilt and the sheets had created a snug cocoon around me and I had no pressing reason to leave it. Over the radio came sweet Christmas songs from Belfast and those monotone perennial readings from "The Bible". Pulling back the curtains, I looked out on a misty neighborhood. Fog hung like static white smoke and colours had been drained away as if the world outside was fading just as underexposed photographic paper in a dark room is liable to do. On the morning of the solstice, I came downstairs to boil two eggs which I ate with a single rice cake and a dash of seasoned French sea salt that I bought in 1998 somewhere in the Réserve Naturelle Nationale de la Baie de l'Aiguillon north of La Rochelle, France. On the morning of the solstice, I thought of yesterday and how I walked in dank river mist down to remote Sand Hall along a bend in The Ri...