December.

I walked along the riverbank this early morning in the dark in the rain, the sky purple and deep above the fast black water. In the half light before dawn all the violet and the rare shadows reveal colors we cannot name, something beyond cobalt and viridian and umber. The wet pavement streaks the streetlamp light in silvery cold with dapples of raindrops and my breath turns to steam in the cool damp air.

The big river running to my left looks like India ink, shimmering with the reflections of stars and windows in buildings and car headlights and the lamps on the bridge. I can hear the cars traveling on the bridge, the hollow rush of the tires and engines and the quick dull thump as the tires roll over the steel joints of the span.

Something in me loves a bridge like I love dreams in which I’m flying. The suspension, the rise coinciding with the falling away of the ground, the feeling of traveling over water.

Something in me fears a bridge like I hate dreams in which I’m flying. The pinprick feeling at the nape of my neck of no solid ground, the notion I might jump and fall, the ending of the dream.

As the night’s curtain parted for dawn I could see the blue and the branches, tall slumbering trees, sap thickened and slowed by the winter cold. Things of the night withdrew like the tide as the sky lifted and lightened.

It's the ending of the year.