Kurt Luchs

Seasonal

One thing we love about living here is the changing of
the seasons. We could make our home someplace more
temperate, more consistent, sure. But then we’d miss the
variety and the subtle rhythms of the year turning. When
the blood comes bubbling up in the streams and lakes, melting
the black ice in which so many of our fallen comrades lie
embedded, their faces still full of the nameless terror they
felt at death, our hearts can’t help but skip a beat with the joy
of spring’s arrival. We slosh merrily through the puddles
of thick red gore. We have to spend a lot of time cleaning
our boots and our feet, only to find our hands are covered
with blood too. But then they always were. Before we know it
summer is here with its torrential rains of poisonous toads,
used chewing tobacco and leaky catheters, always a blessing.
Then comes autumn, when the pus from every suppurating
wound in the world mysteriously migrates to the children’s
school lunches. What a poignant moment for all of us. And
finally winter, so beautiful, so austere. There’s that black ice
again! It coagulates from our hate and rage into a glacier
that covers the earth, crushing everything in its path. We beat
our swords and our fists against it in vain, laughing in spite
of ourselves. But for the few who survive by resorting to
cannibalism, it’s a winter wonderland. And we wouldn’t
have it any other way.