Steel Gray

In line with the winter protocol one goes to town whenever one can. Despite a night of rain and sleet, with the new tires and shocks, it was an easy trip down. I needed butter because of my biscuit consumption, picked up an acorn squash to bake stuffed with raspberries, and a discounted flat-iron steak that I intend to cut into strips and serve on a bed of rice. A pint and a bowl of potato soup at the pub, a cigaret with two staff members, sitting out in the sleet. Replaced my back-up bottle of whiskey and bought an additional packet of papers. Back into single digits tomorrow, with snow, but I hope to spend and hour or two hauling the last rounds of firewood off the driveway and splitting another rick for inside the house. The drive back in was fine, just a bit of slippage near the top, and I was thinking about the winter Glenn and I spent holed up in a church. I don't buy into organized religion. I like some of the music but the doctrine is a line of talk. I was trying to take a short-cut today, to get to the butter in Kroger, and I passed several racks of underwear and socks, thank god I had a shopping cart because it made me dizzy. It makes sense, one-stop shopping, but it's hard for me to wrap my head around it. Underwear and pasta. What they meant is the subject of endless discussion. Everything in every direction is gray. Outside, there is no difference, gray, gray; but when the Pileated Woodpecker flits into sight, suddenly there is this red crest. Everything is changed. There actually is color. It exists, vegetable dyes, refracted light, oil in the parking lot. I was talking with Scott, the new manager at the pub, who's married to Jenny, my naturalist friend, who is B's niece. He's a serious cook and we were talking about marrow bones, the rest of the staff were looking at us as if we were crazy. Wiping out shin bones with a crust of bread? I found it passing strange, though this is hill country and everyone is related, that he would be cooking the shanks of the very same animal whose tail is in my freezer. A lovingly fattened steer that had learned to drink Bud Light from the bottle. It gets very quiet later and I can hear the snowflakes dissolving. Just a whisper. I'm glad I got into town because I hate running out of butter, also that I got all of my laundry done and that my long-underwear is clean and that I have a down pallet on the floor, next to the stove. There's no pretense. I have to look at that word for a while, yes, I think, I have none. If I sleep on my right side I can tuck my hand between my knees and I'm very comfortable. Usually, when I get maudlin, I just pull a blanket up over my ears and hum a few bars of Birmingham Jail.