The Hand of a God

Blessed Phoebus Apollo, son of Zeus, twin brother of Artemis, goddess of fertility, lit his lamp this morning for all of us here. He raised his shining, gentle, hand and laid it warmly on the valley in godlike benediction as if to say "I have not forgotten you - I shall return in time".

And so, in the depths of winter we are reminded that spring and summer are ineluctable. After a week or more of solid rain, grey skies, and damp, cold, air it seems a divine blessing indeed. Suddenly we have solar heated water again in which to bathe and wash our clothes. Hot water issues from taps that recently gave forth only icy clear streams of this staple and foundation of life: colder even than the spring we collect our drinking water from and which, this week, is full in flood - forcing us into galoshes to get close enough to the source to fill our four containers, its clean, fresh, bounty tumbling on past us down the road and into olive groves about us.

Lighter patches of concrete surface on the terraces, long buried in the dark dampness of the new year. The log pile pit lies uncovered, the logs drying off the condensation that has accumulated, becoming ready for the stove that soon is to consume them. Farmboy hones his axe and swings it rhythmically producing kindling by the bundle: kindling that will prime the fire that heats the stove until it becomes hot enough to burn the logs. Eddie fetches and carries: scrap timber and smaller logs to the chopping block; kindling back to the trunk under the front window where he spreads the bundles to dry in the sun.