a walk one day

Wrapped in booted bundles

Sheer breath hits red cheeks

Leaning full length against the grass hedgeside, the world flashes colours when I open my eyes. The walk is our neverending trundle. Hills so sharply white the stone ruins make soft relief for my eyes to rest against. We eat handfuls of snow.

Icicles hanging in thin trickles for our refreshment.

A curl of moss preserved in the root.

We silently salute ourselves, our beauty, our simplicity.

Eating. Apple. Candlelight.

I am eating an apple by candlelight. Each knife-cut slice comes away like the disc of a tiny moon. I admire the way the juice runs through the ridges the knife left, how the light shines through the thin end of each piece. The apple is so beautiful, each knife slice only reveals a new geometric plane from which to admire it. Yellow skin with a red blush, sweet juice. It's all I have eaten in two days. Thick fluids have lurched out of me in rough gargles, leaving me bereft of energy. The day passed slowly, time measured only in the languid shift of lying position. One long blank stare.
But now, right now, I am eating an apple by candlelight and I am thinking about how I wish there was someone here with me to rub my aching knees.

What decade is this?

Holding a Dairy Crest milk bottle under a waterfall of apple juice. Liquid streams and bubbles out of the pressured pile of mush until it topples out of the press into the barrel beneath. I watch steam curl from my hands as I pass the bottle to the farm owner for a juicy swig; he is replete in flat cap and tattered gaberdine. When I look out of the barn window I can see 20 miles of green hills.