I.
Evening finds sunlight lingering, crisscrossed with the long shadows of naked oak limbs; fingers of ice crystals stretching out across the surfaces of brown opaque puddles; last year’s dead grass flattened against the face of the fresh exposed earth, like a newborn’s hair; birdsong.
II.
The road is long. The road is straight. The road is narrow.
The plains I travel over are broad, flat, and unchanging.
The sky overhead is laden with a sheet of silken cloud.
Miles, miles and miles I drive thoughtless in darkness
behind the headlights’ monotonous beams.
Suddenly
a flash of motion, frantic, a fawn darts in front of me
startled I can’t avoid it.
God spares it.
Long afterward I’m haunted by “what if…”
III.
My mind was as white and inert as fields and fields of cold white snow
until after much passing of time, lost in contemplation, I at last did see the snow.
I began to understand that it is through the random senseless falling of so many snowflakes and the relentlessness of mindless endless winds that such intricate exquisite patterns arise upon the surfaces of drifts.
IV.
The Sun shone so brilliantly that the sky burned blue and the fields blazed white. That it was a frigid three degrees was to hard to grasp until you turned into the winds. With the crisp air came clarity, a keen realization that life possesses an undeniable veracity. In the stillness of the moment all was beautiful.
V.
Snowflakes fall in the stillness of night silently blanketing the land. Each one a masterpiece unique, not just each snowflake falling here and now, but each one fallen anywhere ever since the first one ever fell, snowflakes that lose themselves in the mass of the whole, each one a poem undiscovered until one at last lands before your eyes and tells you everything.
VI.
A yellow house seen through the falling snow
I remember the forts and angels we used to make.
The blue sky seen through the naked branches of winter’s oaks
I remember a snowmobile ride in a forest where I first saw my sister smoke.
A doorway illuminated by a lone bulb in the darkness of night says “Come in from the cold”.
VII.
We can choose to change or not
we can either be intentional about what we will be
or believe that change is unnecessary and unwanted.
Be that as it may, change occurs regardless
imperceptibly or in an instant
towards growth or decay.
You decide.
VIII.
It rose brilliantly illuminating winter’s longest night
ascending to its zenith where a darkness came upon it
extinguishing in shadow black its lofty light.
Ocher as blood it turned as if it were dead
and the world grew dim.
In the quiet I pondered Christmas and the Cross
then the shadow ebbed ever so gradually away
until at dawn it entirely vanished.
The Moon had set, the Sun had come
utterly vanquishing the night.
IX.
Mighty is the Oak
Great is the towering Pine
Both slumber undisturbed
roots nestled beneath a deep blanket of snow
The little brook acquiescing to every stone still meanders on its way.
X.
Morning finds us waiting with Ben for his bus
catching snowflakes on our tongues
looking east into a blue sky, up at a soft white cloud
the Sun not yet cresting the tree tops, painting the edge of the cloud yellow
December's chill upon our cheeks waking us to the wonder of a brand new day.
XI.
The gale casts before it an endless snow, falling steadily, obliquely, from a great mass of clouds occupying the gulf above the bay, a space once inhabited by Summer’s lazy breezes, by the setting Sun’s soft glow, a space now darkened by the blackness of Winter’s long night, by the oppressive weight of clouds pressing down upon a weary shore buried beneath the pristine whiteness of a new fallen snow.
XII.
The tree I used climb
the tallest tree sitting on the highest hill
bent and formed by November’s gales
against whose trunk in summer I used to nap
from its topmost branches I’d survey both great lake and small village
years ago branches lopped off
dead trunk towering against the sky
a monument, a testament to childhood
fell
finding it laying there on the hillside
I sat in its heights one last time
remembering.
XIII.
Traveling across the stillness of forested roads beneath old oaks and their canopies of naked dark branches. Arriving, waiting for arrivals, the opening of doors, welcomed and welcoming. Inside, the soft glow of a fire. Outside, chill winds casting before them snow. Spaces filled with long familiar voices, aromas of nutmeg, cloves, garlic.The stillness of night gently parted by the quiet grace of a piano.
Thankful.
XIV.
There was, wasn't there?
Entwined in twisted roots of an old oak.
Between that star and the little red one.
Buried in the limestone heart of Stonetown, down a labyrinthine side street.
Scrawled in illegible handwriting on a yellowing page written as the red sun died one evening on a train out of Mwanza.
In the gentle coo of a mourning dove in evening's soft sunlight.
Hidden in the voice of the wind.
There.
XV.
At the end of the last street, a light pole rises into the darkness. From the worn crooked pole an incandescent bulb casts out a feeble circle of yellow. Beyond lays a barren field. Winds howl. Autumn acquiesces to winter. There’s nowhere to go from here, yet look, beyond the road, pole, and field, into the night. A crescent moon hangs low, smiling down on me.
XVI.
I look out the window and see the Moon sitting atop a black mass of cloud, like a immense cyclops with a glowing white eye and a gray head of hair. The winds howl, the lakes roar, the trees rattle. I can't wait to fall asleep and dream.
XVII.
Across the field in the early evening when the low-lying-Sun casts its light upon the forest's Fall raiment I see an entrance beneath the trees, a dark passage into the heart of the wood, a way revealed, never before seen, beckoning me, bidding me come, drawing me away from the world of man.
XVIII.
Outside at this late hour a soft white moon, nestled in a faint gray blanket of cloud, is cradled in the dark arms of a great oak, its leaves swaying in October's capricious gusts. Inside in the fireplace only embers remain, waxing and waning in the darkness of the room, all that remains of the blazing fire we sat around.
XIX.
The Sun had set. Long horizontal bands of wispy clouds remained, peach-colored and pastel orange, glowing in the still-yet-azure sky. Thrust up between it and I, jabbed the dark silhouettes of narrow dead pines cutting me off from the light. I lingered and watched it ebb away until the first few stars appeared.
XX.
If all were maples, and it always October, would I notice? Would I stop dead in my tracks, awestruck? I know soon the time will come when yellow leaves lay plastered against the black asphalt by a driving rain, but that in its own moment is also beautiful.
XXI.
As I rode home this evening in the shadows, at the feet of the mighty white pines towering above me, I looked up to see their outstretched limbs reaching into the heights. They were aflame with the remnants of the sun's tangential rays, still glowing golden full of light. Thus began the day's descent into the ever-waiting hand's of night.
XXII.
Ah you Sun, regaling yourself with royal cerulean, claiming this cool Fall afternoon! Colors riddle the hills, violent reds, yellows, oranges bursting forth as if explosions, caught in full flower, arrested in time, juxtaposed against Summer's fading green slowly swept away before the dread Boreas. I ask of thee only a moment in your light to rest and warm my face, a few more ripe tomatoes, and a honey-crisp to savor.
