(Prelude) Bare Trees

It was nearing the time

when out

of necessity

he would rise 30 minutes

earlier

in part

to provide

extra moments for

stumbling into morning darkness 

 igniting the aged jeep

in effort to make it

habitable upon

leaving for his employer.

Comfort in memory

whose engram noted

the vehicle had been the last owned

by his father,

whom at 80 years in this same month

could be found to

drive it recklessly down

leaf strewn two-tracks

hauling feed-

corn, apples, carrots

and the like-

to his final deer blind.

As roused about this encore opening day

as any of the previous 70 or so.

These days

 hours of sunlight began to recede

 heralding what

became seven months

of seasonal challenge.

While yet no snow to navigate,

in but weeks

he would be

cursing the cold rapture

of icy intrusion

to his bared ankles and feet

en route to

to a swift brooming of the vehicle

perhaps still in bathrobe and

whatever insufficient footwear

was offered by the back porch. 

First exhaust belched out the tailpipe

depositing a carbon Rorschach in the snow.

He would initiate the window scraping process

assuming last year’s cheap plastic implement

could be located in the garage, or under the back seat.

Often he would draw the chattering wrath

of irrate pine squirrels

whom he believed to reside in the abandoned property

next to the drive.

Always so unduly pissed off

for seemingly such a minor intrusion into their

morning routine. 

He had acquired in his first years

in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula

the vicarious knowledge that

this coming of winter solely earned

season status with the indigenous population-

Finlanders, Italians, Ojibway, and Eastern Europeans-

With spring, summer and fall

barely garnering a prelude reputation

to the months of darkness.

And that an individual or family could

could measure self-worth, not by

a score on a psychometric instrument,
but by the number of cords cut and stacked

for the stove.
K. Carter