Welcoming Winter's Warmth

What value we ignore
these short days
air filled with crystalline arrest
bestowing remembrance of colors in respite
while we engage anew
our will to embrace
the resistance
the invitation to accept

Winter ushers us to perfect seats
where bows of pine and oak wood
curl their needle and leaf
into protection and sleep
wisdom we know little of
nature's ancestral intransience

This stage of emptiness soon fills
like protective strands of thread interlaced
woven crystals cloak bare branches
while crusts of ice bear final witness
cover for now
irrigation come spring

How wise
this four act saga of nature
void of discrimination
knowing how little life requires
of comfort we so covetously horde
even as rarefied light
that which never hides in the shadows
always provides
if only we would pause
allow

Fortunately

An audience of seeds will survive
amidst a huddled awareness
providing innate connection
to all that is
from all that was
those knowing well
that which patience rewards

Survival of the fittest
understands beyond the science
beyond a season
gathering carefully the warmth to offer later
one body to another
revealing the exponential wonder
to other unique crystals in flight

Nature's singularity
so very near for some
a winter's cold away for others