Surrender to the Wind

Lately, in the Murmuring Woods, there’s many a fierce wind raking through the wintry branches and boughs of the trees. Twigs, boughs and branches, leaves and dry grass lay strewn in disarray over the earthy paths. What was she doing, I wondered, ‘She of the Winter Wind’? Preparing to go on the journey on the Serpentine Road, I took her portrait on a late afternoon ramble through the Woods from Riversleigh, and she was unapologetic: “I am the bringer of sweeping moods and changes,” she said, efficiently tidying up a stack of leaves that were dead. “I take away what’s dead, the official sweeper of old things, you might say,” she explained… “then my Sister Rain washes it all away. Then, of course, the others come to do their work…” I understood, that without all this work, there would be no shifting seasons. “Hope they like the portrait,” she said, before busily rushing away, taking the twigs and leaves with her.

“She of the Winter Wind” at Work.

Portrait of “She of the Winter Wind”.

Addendum: Though it was more uncomfortable than I thought it would be, I surrendered my old excess baggage, my old skin, to ‘She of the Winter Wind’. It was a cold and harrowing process, for ‘She’ does not seem to think these things are necessary any longer. And of course, ‘She’ is right…because these were not my things, but blow-ins I thought were mine. Letting it go to the Winter winds on the Serpentine Road.

(copyright Imogen Crest 2007.)