And I am here in my winter bed–
When darksome days loom like beetles overhead–
No frozen lakes of glass, or animals crawling on the forest floor
And I am here in my winter bed.

It is quite a bed, isn’t it? There was a night that took place recently, if I can recall correctly in my nighttime thoughts, when I decided that my bed had become a wintry place. I made quick to furnish this place with a thick comforter. It is gray and five inches thick. I am reluctantly born again every morning. And every night I die happily again under the weight of warmth and waning thoughts. It is quite a bed. And I am here in my winter bed.

Today was a day, again. I caught the tears of somber rainclouds with my hat and jacket. They sizzled into warm cotton and were remembered faintly never again. It was a day to wear a hat.

I wore a gray hat.

At noon I thought of lovers loving, and of selfish lovers loving. It was the very same thought twice.

And when I thought this, I glanced out of the window from my winter bed, and watched the rain swirl in the gray sky like gold-tipped psychosis. And again I thought of lovers loving, and of selfish lovers loving. I shuddered and considered a hot bath and the reading of books. And then this happened: Two deer appeared out of the red and the yellow and the dying green. Where they had materialized from, I had no idea. They walked across the slope of green grass and chewed on the offspring of sleepy branches. I wrapped my body in a brown blanket — the first thing I bought when I moved back to Virginia years and happy years ago. I sipped my green tea and let it burn the whole way down. It didn’t bother me. The deer snipped and snapped at sleepy branches. They walked slowly and then not at all. At that moment, I couldn’t envision a more defenseless animal to kill, couldn’t think of a less emasculating creature to carve into a trophy to be hung on a living room wall like a pus-bubbling boil.

I thought of older, deader human beings, and of their diets, and how their diets were now “sport”.

I thought of home.

Home, too, would have been gray. For reasons including the weather and not.

And it rained on the grass behind my winter bed, watery tumors dropping downward like the tears of little children.

And the two unselfish lovers ate what they would, and I watched them behind glass and waning thoughts.

The darksome day boomed and cracked and faltered; it left a gray paste in the darksome sky, like the dead-pale skin of a long-gone octopus.

I thought of home.

And of people and places.

Today was a day, again. It wasn’t a particularly good day. It wasn’t a bad day. Just gray paste and raindrops and silent-stepping animals with grumbling stomachs who meant me no harm.

The trees are being sapped of life, and sent to temporary graves.

And the deer will eat their offspring with little black mouths.

They are out there now, I’m sure. They will eat and run and run and run and go and go and go.

But tonight I will be still. I will sleep and sleep and sleep.

I write this now:

And I am here in my winter bed.