Welcome

It is a dark and shadowed winter morning here. Crackling cold. The sun is like a fat watermelon backing the night down and down through trees so tall I have to tilt my head back to look. At last I understand my grandmother's ritualistic saying, "A woman rises of her own will in the morning". Stepping outside to measure my day the cold air steamed my breath in clouds. Bare tree branches are dripping water from ice prongs that teethed their sides. The yard pings and sighs as the sun releses the trees from their armors of ice. This is north Florida.