Have you ever had the good pleasure of hearing Schubert's D 957, No. 4 Standchen,"Swan Song"? I couldn't think of one single thing, sound, or taste that could compare to it--especially as the snow falls heavily, but delicately beside me. There they are like falling angels, drifting in a world stark by comparison of its purity. And here I sit wrapped up in euphoric melodies of great winged beasts and swelling hearts of misfortune and somehow all the fortune in the world seems to follow me deeper into my own heart as the perfectly elegant melody plays on.
First it's sad.
The small umbrella like creature isn't fully awake yet, its wings are only forming it's idea of flight. They're like broken branches still clinging to the crisp air of winter, not ready for the blush of spring to warm them and rub them into consciousness. How its tiny heart beats rapidly with anticipation of the world it has yet to know.
A crunch and crack. Next the wings stretch. They bend in a misshapen fashion until the delicate bones almost snap, pushing themselves against their fragile cabin, at last freeing himself from his ivory prison and home in one flicker of pressure.
How the golden flower awakes his senses and drowns his broken wings in diurnal goodness.
For a while he merely sits there taking in the vastness of color and smell and concoction of chill and warmth around him.
His little feet can't take him far, but he seems to have felt the course of the whole earth with each footstep he takes.
Yet in an instant, an idea pulses through him.
His wings begin to itch with intoxicating yearning. The desire to forsake his feet and stretch toward a bright domain he's never tasted devours all other senses. He must taste the sky even if he can't ever explain why.
Slowly he lowers himself from his solitude and in a rush of pure insanity he leaps from his broken house and lets the wind taste his feathers, the clouds kiss his muscles, feet, eyes and lastly the sky itself--how it looks at him as if he were only the first creature to ever experience flight. He lets the world of colors and expanse and freedom delight his spirit. His wings beat with the wind in a beautifully chaotic dance until the scintillating sky of night welcomes the moon and drenches his greyish wings in night light.
He sleeps for a moment in the starlight he has never before seen.
For many days this is the life he knows.
But night is not always so constant.
One fresh night of Summer, as his purring heart slowly sinks and rises to the usual rhythm of darkness, another being of night has a heart that is pounding and swiftly drawing closer. It yearns for his in a manner far more powerful than of his yearning of flight many moons ago.
The beast cloaked in darkness draws close to him.
He doesn't wake just yet.
The beast stares for a moment. It has seen this slumberous creature many times before, but never had it been so close.
Another heart race and then it lessens.
Softly and with the sfumato of moonlight just barely peaking around her, the creature bends down and gently pushes her lips against his own dreaming lips, possibly tasting his very dreams as she does it. It's so gentle he almost doesn't wake, but then a spoonful of moonlight shimmers on her body and dances against his eyelids in a rapture of waking him.
His eyes flutter open to her rapid heartbeat, but he doesn't move.
How could he?
They merely look into each other's eyes for a long moment. The night grew unusually quiet.
Sorrow comes at first, for the awoken beast, for surely he has never seen a creature so beautiful, so pure and white as fresh fallen snow. But his heart breaks at the thought the sky might've heard his aching thoughts. Perhaps he has betrayed the sky. He doesn't know. But suddenly, somethings shifts. The white angel moves away and with a tear sledding down the pillow of her white cheek she's gone.
Autumn follows where she wanders and leaves the sleeping beast in elegiac chill and sorrow.
A few tides of thought wash upon him, as the world he once knew is spun in gold and musk once more, "Will she ever come back? Does she know that Winter is coming? And could it be the sky has forgiven me yet?"
And lastly, "Was it all nothing more than a sad dream of toil and pleasurable pain?"
A flake or two begin to fall as these thoughts race through him night after night. He can't sleep without those haunting eyes of Summer starlight keeping him company.
On the first day of real snow, everything changes. Through the flurry of ivory music a dancer falls through it, as if making a waltz of the Winter around her.
The starlit girl.
She's here, inside the sky and dancing alone with the Winter wind and the sky's falling angels.
For one moment, and just one only, he stops and watches the way the snowflakes tangle in her pure white wings--and then he joins the dance.
It is the waltz his heart had always been searching the skies for.
And last, happiness.
-k.p.b.
Monday 10:23AM
The first breathless fall of gentle snow.
