The snow is coming gently down, as though someone aloft was shaking a feather pillow. Small gusts of wind whirl it up and around and it settles again on the ground, on the fence posts, on tree branches and the backs of the juncoes waiting their turn at the feeder. The hundreds of geese that peppered the surface of the pond just a couple of weeks ago have fled south ahead of the cold and the snow. The mornings belong now to the jay and the crow and the silence that even their strident calls can't shatter.
This is the hunkering down time of year, when everything that lives seeks shelter or stands stoically against the winds. I walk the snowbound meadows and see the bones of last summer's flowers - the delicate brown cups of Queen Anne's lace, the empty seedpods of the milkweed, the delicate stems of long dead asters. There is beauty in austerity if you look for it, and colors that are overshadowed by summer's riotous shades - the buff and fawn of spent grasses, the muted scarlet of red dogwood osier and blackberry canes, the rich mahogany of oak leaves, the greeny-black of pines and firs.
To know the land when it is quiet, to see the promise of spring in the tightly held buds already set but sleeping, is to know hope.
7 comments:
it is to know hope...the seasons always bring the reminder that life is cyclical...the light always follows the dark...and in our rest we are not dead but still alive and preparing to bloom, so hunker on...smiles.
I never thought of putting hope with winter, but it is a nice contrast and I will try to keep hope alive until the spring thaw!! Lovely post. We are getting cold gray rain...no snow.
So true, I like to look at what is left behind
To see hope and promise in spring is one thing but to recognize it in winter is the sign of a true optimist. And a poet. Lovely post, as always, Pauline.
I can confirm that snowflakes are he feathers that Frau Holle shakes out of her huge fat german featherbeds, you know the kind which is plump and deep, in which you sink and never again come up if you don’t want to.
We children have known this for ever. Wen she’s finished shaking she settles them in the open windows in heaven. That why are always just a few flakes drifting down when the large load has already covered the ground.
Winter has to be the season of hope. it is what gets us through it. Mind you living in a town where it doesn't snow helps a lot too.
Brian - "in our rest we are not dead but still alive and preparing to bloom" I like that!
Tabor - there's 6 inches of white stuff on the ground. I love the snow!
Me too, OOTP
Thanks, Hilary. There isn't a season I don't like…
Friko - I looked up the story of Frau Holle - thanks for teaching me something new :)
JCN - Hope, yes, and certainty. I would miss the snow if I were to move away to a warmer climate.
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