Darkening Toward Dawn

Steadily thickening clouds have at last obscured the moon. The last time I went out, I felt a few tiny drops of rain, like icy pinpricks. It is very cold, but I don't know if it is cold enough to snow. Perhaps it will snow farther up in the mountains, where a deeper darkness crowds the night sky, suggesting a storm underway. I don't know. This has been a winter of sudden changes, unexpected reversals and false promises. Now there is the hollow sound of treetop wind, and the dark towers of the pines sway like inverted pendulums as a wind chime somewhere nearby gongs like a clock with no set hours. Something is stuck in my head and I can't bring it out. It is not like a song or a thought or an obsession. It is like a shadow vanishing around a corner in a dream, fraught with mystery, perhaps with peril, but something which nevertheless must be sought. There have been dreams in which, no matter how softly I walked, the sound of my footsteps echoed loudly, so that whatever I sought eluded me by their sound, and whatever I feared was drawn near, yet both promise and fear remained as evanescent as a fragrance drifting on a breeze. Tonight, I feel as though I have wandered waking into one of those dreams. The very air is strange, and I don't know why. The concrete world vanishes in abstraction. I need to sleep.