The season of trying to stay warm.
Keeping it all together as things fall apart.
White sprinkled from the sky with heavy hand.
Coats the ground, covers fence posts, and branches.
Makes a soft pillow of the barren fields, decorates with ice. Quail gather under windows, puff feathers, cluck, preen.
Snowploughs scrape roads already rough, throwing sparks like fireworks.
Camera sulks, not allowed to venture out, dark skies threaten.
Cabin fever infects cat, vehicles, and his runners, all used to roaming.
Fragrant scones speckled with cranberries, teased with lemon.
Yellow is the color of cheer this winter.
Warm tea, steaming cups, mittened hands.
Wrapped scarves, bulky jackets, thick socks. January… one kind word can warm 3 months.
Part of me wants those months to rush, fast, hard go away.
And the other part of me is willing to wait, endure, enjoy.
Right now it’s an new experience, maybe one day it will fade.
Phone calls from our old home speak of green spears piercing cold ground.
This gardener’s heart leaps at the thought of a garden that could be growing.
Then stills as it realizes.
We are buried, cold, dark, brown and liberal sprinkling of white.
Peace is in our hearts, this is the right choice for us.
Life can be lived in many ways. Orange school bus roars by, startling doves from the feeder.
Ghostly wet smudges on the window, cat peers at the birds.
His black and white world attracted by movement.
Inside is the place to be, if you are made of soft fur.
Thrilled to see deer tracks meandering the backyard.
My precious coastal babies s lumbering in the unknown winter.
Will I be so happy if sprouting leaves become a deer salad come spring?
I will wait to find out, for this is one spring that will be wanted even more.
And one kind word remains.
Spring.