This content was published first in The Sunday Letters Journal: https://sundayletters.larrygmaguire.com/p/icy-morning by Larry G. Maguire on Fri, 09 Dec 2022 13:05:55 GMT

It will take a lot for the tight angle of the sun to melt the ice on the south side of rooves today. It's low in the sky, turning cold mist into a glare. Trees older than me reach into it like dark fractals against its whitish yellow. There is a presence in it, it seems. Something that doesn’t speak and yet answers it all.

Tilly's adversary pecks at frozen broccoli she refused to eat, while she lies content on the right side of the back door. You’re welcome to it, magpie. I won’t fight you today. I’d hardly fight you on a warm day for broccoli.

How do grass and leaves survive the cold? Do they feel it like I do? I thought, as Cara peeled a bay leaf from the back of its icy morning coating. Look dad, she said, amazed by it all. I hope she always will.

Crunch under foot, cold biting at my bonce through the gap in my beanie…elastic gone, must sort that out. A frozen worm – poor bastard. Breakfast for a jackdaw.

The day reminds me of a verse for those unworthy the comfort of a warm place. Only with that privilege, it seems, do I get to see the wonder in a day as harsh on my skin as this. Or maybe it’s the absence of obligation.

Jobs make us obligated, teach us to do what we’re told. To switch off, to dull our senses, to follow the rules, to distrust our intuition. Don’t notice, and if you do, ignore and don’t ask questions. If I had a job, I perhaps would not have walked my daughter to school this morning in the cold. And if I did, in fact, walk her to school, perhaps I would have not the space in mind to notice the things that I did or even to hear her speak to me.

To paraphrase the poet, John Moriarty, we are dominated and overwhelmed by who we sociologically are.