There is a frosty blanket on those days in the South, when cotton was king and division cut hearts of men and women. A lifetime ago. No, many lifetimes and generations ago. It’s her past. And a beautiful crop has a million stories to tell, if she could talk. She’d tell of the pickers and their pain. She makes warm the world with all her woven comfort. We sleep with her, wear her. She has a history. She has a future. Plump and white and pregnant with possibility, she lays in wait for machines to gather her for market. White and winsome, covering the South and all the world. A paradox of war and pain and warmth and frosty chilled relations. She, caught between the strife of people, owning, working in her fields. Way down South on her land. The frost is gone, the chill is warmed. She breathes peace now, in her fields and looks like heaven, a sea of clouds.

And he is frosting on my life. I, plain vanilla cake and he, rich cream frosting spreads a blanket on my soul and on my very life. Last night I dreamt of Paris for our 25th, the next one, he of Italy. This life made sweeter, richer in the aging. And in the dreaming. We may sit in zipcode here and never leave but in our dreams. But love is whipped up nonetheless. No less sweeter in the staying. I am covered by his care, spread on me, a covering. And I hold his heavy on the back of my baked being. The complement of two, was planned in Garden Eden. And today its richer still. So much lovelier when two walk tandem out into the world.

He changes seasons when He speaks. He says and it is so. First frost speaks of what’s to come, the earth holds change, like brittle illusion on the field. It looks like snow. Yet when morning is broken it is gone. The frost melts away with the breaking of day. Like all illusion. It never lasts.

Joining Laura and Amber C. Haines at The Run a Muck for her concrete word prompts. There is a wonderful commuity of writers there, exploring abstract themes around the tangible things of this life.

And I am linking with Michelle.