A Flash of Crimson

The ebb of winter has drained these January days of colour and movement.  Fallowed and  faded, the flow of life seems to have slowed to an almost glacial drip. Hauling myself out of the dull comfort of home, I venture into the old deer park. The oaks stand shorn and bleak, their gnarled trunks thick with the callous of age. Without the crimple of their leaves, the rustle of their oaky song has vanished back into the hardened earth. A heavy cloak of silence covers them.

Pausing beside one of these ancients, I place the palm of my hand against the furrows of her bark. Eyes closed, I will myself to tap into the life blood which I dare to hope still flows somewhere deep within. I long for the possibility of a kind of contagion of life, a transfer of fire to rekindle the embers of my wintered hearth. The oak responds with mute rigidity. I must be a fool.

And that’s when you knock on my door. Tap. Tap. Tap. A rapid hammering of percussive sound tears through the muffled silence, piercing the thickened skin of my own barkened soul. My eyes leap up to find you. There. High in the branches of  the old oak, you blaze into view. A flash of crimson crowning the vivid and uncompromising contrast of your black and white plumage. Your pewter beak pounds the ashen bark with pneumatic precision, awakening the wood from her slumber and casting your message of defiant aliveness across the whimpered canopies. I am alive. I am alive. I am alive.

All at once I feel the flicker of contagion catch the dry wick of my heart. A flash of crimson spreads across my chest and I feel the strong percussive rhythm within me beat out her own defiance. Yes, the drum insists. I am alive.