Leaves Whirling through Winter Sky

Leaves whirling and falling in the wind. On this cold morning I stood outside to follow the protracted breakthrough of the sun between two heavy clouds. Down in the river valley a shadow of darkness still covered the harbourtown. Bundels of beaming light towered up towards an invisible centre point. On the top of the moving cloud a bright shining was heralding the rising sun. I shivered in the strong icy wind and tried to open up into full awareness of this splendid happening. The coming of a real winterday. Then, from behind my Lumix, I saw all these leaves blown from their branches tumbling in the air. They were the messengers of the big Solling Oaks, guarding the border forest road into Lower Saksony.

The big dark whirling leaves imitated the downflight of the craws I had seen so often in Summer. After these leaves, the snow flakes are to follow. O, wintertime up here at the mountainside I’m longing for your roughness, your isolating power. Already as a kid I loved snow and ice, breathing flowers on the frozen windows of our outskirt home. I remember some very cold winters in the Fourties and Fifties. Heavy isolation curtains, extra thick blankets, the Nortwestern howling though the frontdoor. My father poking up the stoves, after shovelling coal outside.

But, you know, here I saw only some leaves falling. Awakening and having a memory flash. Memories about feeling happy and safe especially under severe winter circumstances. Wat did I know of the Cold War going on? I can still remember moods and situations in the last years of the war. Bombardment and disaster in the neighbourhood. They seem to have lost their emotional impact. But leaves whirling through the sky on a cold winter day, they can tell me a long story. But not for now. Sleep Well, Dear Friends.