31-1 2023-11-14

It was one bleak midwinter that I followed a crimson trail into the woods. Flickering firelight cast my long shadow through the doorway and onto the snow. Soon, that fireplace was a half-forgotten memory, replaced by a brilliant blue moon, and a thousand littler ones that were even more brilliant and even more blue, and one blue blue jay, who was the most brilliantest and bluest of them all. Who sang me a song about a marvellous baby jay whose coat was still soft and gray. She waddled and chirped since she could not yet sing and fly. And now she was flying, and singing beautiful songs about those days when she could still but waddle and chirp. Now a stranger she led along an inky path through winding forest. How blue jay's voice ached and soothed each staggered print, each told an unspoken tale. Here I stepped along those pained paw-prints, listened to every broken chord in sweet blue jay's song, winced at every drop of blood and limping step toward a final and unknown bed. And there lay, where the hemlocks gathered to sway, a beautiful blue-gray wolf. I watched his matted fur ripple over his wavy ribcage, how slowly he rose and sank, stinging breath in, and frozen breath out, listen. Listen to his beating heart, how it weakly pulsed out of an unseen wound. And so warmly his blood soaked my skin as I hurried on back home, where in the warm light of that still-flickering fire, I watched slick crimson turn to viscous maroon, and then a violet sheen that somehow made his coat softer and warmer than ever before. Under those unworried eyelids, he dreamed away unhurried dreams. He dreamt a half-forgotten dream of a young wolfpup one stormy day, who wandered away from his mother. He had followed the irresistable chirps of one beautiful blue-gray jay who had fallen a long way from a nest that was no longer there. How through the howling wind that cracked and whipped, her voice floated in and out and found its way. To a lonely gray-blue wolfpup who laid himself down next to her, and listened for one magical forever. And when he awoke from a dreamless sleep, he was so sad to see that the storm had faded away, and gone too was the most beautiful bluest jay. And to those thousand cedars, firs, and hemlocks swayed, he longed to hear that blue jay sing just one last song.