winter storm.

i.

musing on the miracle of a soul lifted from the mire,

how little moments reflect the something altogether new and the absence of all that used to ride the rails.

buried in a foot deep drift of snow is the fear, the anger, the panic.

instead, now, a running and colliding into banks of powder with a song of laughter and a

roar of delight.

I can stand in the center of the white weighted branches, in the echo of a shimmering silence, and hear my own voice speak back to me. I can listen.

ii.

as the wind reaches like a hand inside my coat,

my breath catches and I notice my wondering now shift it's weight.

here I hover on the fence of a greater vessel, and peer headlong down the slope of the last trail.

I could fall and return to the ice, under cold water.

"...silver heels, spitting snow.

something someone help them. it's me...."

there trembles a familiar as the sun slides away and I sit by a solid fire, facing the night again.

iii.

the bough bears the weight of hope.

this time the rain threads through my fingers and, at last, I touch the edge of a sea

that has been stirring under a near winter.

it is nothing sudden that carries me into a deeper water,

but I grieve all the same with a pocketful of joy.

what questions circle me and bend my heart at angles I can't imagine to unwind.

why seasons spin around our senses, then surprise us with their constancy.

and, why, a bird, freed from the cage, might hesitate to know the sky.

iv.

o winter wisdom,

carry me in all your sacred silence to that brightest dance in the shimmer of a single snowflake.

may all the old and deep sleep revive the dream of my own heart

and wake me to the reception of love.