Tyre tracks in the snow

I've come for the second time in two weeks to the East country, where skies are always wide and the wide patched farm lands are flat and roll on to the horizon.

Last week I came for a day, broke with my Essex love on the way to another ending, the end of youth and apprenticeship. My love and I returned to the military wasteland by the mudflat sea where we once first kiss trying to resist the return knowing how circles close in on themselves but we were inexorably drawn there, sad and in love, full of hope and care. I taught her to sit the first time and full & of loving kindness we became that very snakes tale. As we left that saceed place, our flats by the shore with the road that goes under the sea into infinity, we found the most beautiful absurd tasteless sublime christmas light decoration, a polar bear by the side of the lane, shaking his sad lonely head as if incredulous that he'd been brought to existence, that this moment was real and sad, that we had the audacity to film him shaking that shaggy head o' light.

This time I'm in the East on retreat, rolling in the snow and sittin', saunas and walks in the fens with other anonymous friends, wellies on and circumnambulating the old bodhisattva, shaking old red sticks of incence at the stars for y'all and playing snowball fights with anyone we can drag into it. Its new year and I fancy a little refreshment here, a little lighten up, I spent the afternoon putting snowballs on top of each other at the bench where the birdwatchers go, five and seven and three but the tall one - daddy - falls over and I make a little row of various heights, as I walk on I get compulsive and leave the whole white- and reeds area with little melting monuments, I feel like andy g. and secretly hope that someone sees these picnicking snowball families before they go the way of all good cloud creations, into the sea.

And this time, unlike last time when as say my youth ended and I had to leave quick in order to sleep the next day so I could make some money so I could get my family some small Christian offerings (not that I'm Christian as such tho' its got a coupla nice ideas - like blessed are the meek), I'm here awhile and its snowing. You ever driven in floating snow? You lose the ground (someone told me its mesmerising but I say this) and all sense of speed- I see why its dangerous- you might be doing 70 but feel like yr doing five.. Anyway I'm here long enough to walk round the village looking for camera film so I can take photographs (to make the snow last), but I dont' get none and anyhow sometimes its better to just look - so I'm looking for the image that sums it all up, I even see kids and parents straight out of memories going on missions with their long buried sleds, but nothing does it as well as what I see on the road, so beautiful and I ask myself 'why.' to no immediate answer but cos its true, and I mean so true of now and the way the world is and what we're doing with our pure 'virgin' snow (is snow the mother of god?), and I'm not getting righteous because I and most everyone I know drives sometimes, but this is Truth written in the snow, and the author is all of us and the canvas is is the whole world and I mean in particular the top and the bottom bits where the snow still is just now. And I write to you about it and I write a little poem too and even take a photograph the next day cos its the best image I can come up with - tyre tracks in the snow - meanwhile I'll carry on walking and throwing snowballs tho' now they're getting wet and roll harder in the gloves, and being solitary and thinking 'bout how I should live my life, but as the poem says, when the snow is gone, the tyre tracks remain.