Outside this window #13

Outside this window a backdrop of white cloud is masking everything about the horizon, save the green fingers of gaelic leaves climbing the solid mist raindrop by raindrop. There is a concrete wall dividing the garden lawn from the wild scrub. I stood at this wall two and a half years ago, ankle deep in snow and glorious muffled silence, buried inside the same connected moment the procession of flowers — single stems — made their way from the flower seller, the florist, the gardens overlooking the ocean and mountains he loved so much, to Pete’s decoupaged coffin waiting inside the crowded cathedral in Cape Town. The sun blazed a trail and a riot of colourful petals rained down, a fitting uprising against Pete’s sudden departure. I stood in the snow and its thick cocoon of silence. My location that morning became my compass. Outside this window a thin white vertical line runs down the concrete wall dividing untamed landscape from clipped civilisation, reminding me of that snowy day in December and my new coordinates.