Winter Scapes

Each variation is a reminder that time has shifted, it has continued as it does, a cycle of unstoppable revolutions. Each change is subtle, from hour to hour, as if creeping as honey falls from the spoon. Slow revolutions barely discernible to the naked eye. One day landscape is bright green and lush and then as if moving in slow-motion it is less and less so. Green fades to brown and brown to gray and gray to black and then white to gray and white to blue and then the graying of all the hues. Colors muted and at rest.

Then the humid air ceases to press upon me and instead it is a nip at my nose. This slow march is predicable and yet the coolness has the power to steal my very breath, one day I labor under the weight of the moisture in the air and then in a blink of an eye, my lungs seize as the brisk wind caresses my nose and neck and my windpipe.

The trees have stripped and exhibit their bareness with a proud, still devotion. Their skeletons lay bare; there for the eye to behold. To my eye their twisted forms tell a tale of wind and rain, of hiding places revealed and of mysteries of an ancient moon to anyone who dare pause and see. For the wise old owl knows seeing is not looking and looking is not seeing. Understanding is a gift, which comes with wisdom and patience.

Even in nakedness tress maintain a reserve, a hidden place. Cloaked in brown, the tree reveals its beauty, while yet; secrets remain buried deep; an inner source, a secret, a knowing which will until death remain untapped.

Varying shades of gray, cloud my eyes. In this desolate coldness, my heart is tempered. This transition - this sleepful awakening is the fiery passion of the passing thunderstorm receding and slowly being replaced by a quiet and contemplative coolness. A process marred only by the fiery breeze, ripping through me as the North Wind dances and stirs.

A single degree means the difference between a hard pelting sleet and a burst of fluffy lovely dancing bit of frozen cotton. Each downy flake as unique in its beauty and asymmetry as the bit of biting ice and yet one is commemorated and the other reviled. Beautiful crystal forms built around an inner darkness, a fleck of something feared and less revered. For their lesson of fragility and their beauty is in the juxtaposition of beauty and beast. One cannot be without the other. Nothing extraordinary can exist with out a touch of ordinary.

A season of melancholy the poet oft laments. A darkening of the soul happens in time with the darkening of an early night bringing sadness to many a soul. Tis true the extended darkness causes a period of deep thought and examination. For nakedness is reveling and cloying at the same time. For each revelation is a surprise and a confirmation.

Nights huddled before a fire watching the intensity of the flame as it engulfs and consumes. A warm woolen covers encompassing and surrounding. The starkness of the season a counterpoint to the layers and layers in which I hide, whilst in summer I peal away each layer, bathing my nakedness under the burning rays of the sun.

And yet during this season of naked starkness moments, slices of time exist, perhaps lasting a few hours or even a few days, when the sky is the clearest of blue and the sun the brightest of white. Despite the arctic chill and the cold, which reaches me and infiltrates my bones, I rejoice in the splendor and clarity of the sun. As if with its gentle warm caress, the shadows disappear and I see the beauty in the starkness, in an unveiling of the naked splendor of the world around. No shadows to camouflage and no blankets of green to cover and disguise the imperfections now so wonderfully uncovered.
For the trees have no fear. They are proud and tall in their naked glory. Reaching for the sky, clamoring to touch the warm waves of light, which is illuminating and blinding to my eyes. The warmth drunk and consumed by my very soul.

And as the light both covers and discovers, time continues to march forward, bit by bit, leaving me to think and wonder and wonder and think. All the while, without my notice, the blanket of lush hiding places begins to once again cloud my discoveries and hide the recently uncovered truths.