Winter

I took a stroll down a snow melted path by the Rancocas Creek with my love. We wore invisible red silk threads wrapped around our wrists in honor of our fated devotion as we meandered through a brown, sleeping field. Tiny sparrows crunched under brush on broken sticks.  And the whoo of a gentle wind tapped stillness on the shoulder who did not budge.

I saw how tree trunks in winter have their big debut and show off their gnarled, twisted limbs and leafless outstretched arms. Finally free from the heavy, wet burden of carrying  the green spring and summer.

How tall brittle grass reminded me of a childhood spent among cattails and milkweeds, ripping open caterpillar nests with a stick, in careless destruction of life.

How silence is the winter’s way of turning inward, quietly shutting me out, not realizing how much it hurts.

How the sunless glaze of a cold dark day warns of an eternal winter.

And how joy, unseen, is buried under hard, unrelenting earth that softens from our heated steps.