Just After Sometime.

The track is white - sun bleached, compacted by time and wheels. 

Rutted by rain and passage, lain compliant with age.

It runs for two kilometres, house to road.

The road is black, starker because of newly added white lines.

From then then on, only a side one to the main. It is grey.

Blotchy in parts, washed out in others.

Then it too becomes a track, through the forest.

Green, a small path of brown.

Bird song and animal call on each side.

The brown widens, becomes two.

Cart tracks.

Green reduced to the edges. At first. 

The green creeps back.

Invading.

Overwhelming.

Dominant.

A field, a mushroom.

Orange.

Bright, joyful.

Celebrating the autumn before the leaf fall.

They will. 

Soon.

Sunlight still lies low and, with the tree trunks and the passage of movement, flashes of red break across the peripheral vision of the one passaging.

Me.

I’m off to the village.

The post office. 

It still has one!

It did, then it didn’t, then it does.

I arrive, the autumn has turned to winter.

Spring is not far off.

The days are lengthening, a violet has bloomed and a woodpecker is drilling for gold.

The post office is shut.

A sign on the door tries to explain.

Exceptionally closed from December 25th to January 2^nd inclusive. Reopening January 5^th.

The year is ending and will begin again.

Soon.

Or just after.