Overcast Night

[rejectomorph]

An owl is hooting. The waxing moon has long since set, and the clouds it illuminated are now almost as dark as the mass of trees. Maybe the owl can see this dim landscape, but I can make out only vague shapes. The stars do not exist. Still, all but invisible, silent but for the hooting owl, the night becomes something to feel and breathe. There is damp in the air, and scents rise from grass and soil and leaves. Cold creeps through cloth, brushes my skin and makes it shiver. I inhale what seems an essence of the changing seasons, and it is as though the earth and woods were dissolving into this dense fragrance, and winter being expelled from the ground to become a fog that can be felt and smelled but not seen. I would like to keep this ghost in a bottle, to be opened in the sultry days of summer.