Winter Begins

And now we sit in the deepest pocket of the year’s darkness, with the night air so still that even the nocturnal predators do not dare to disturb the hush with their cries. We have reached the farthest point on our yearly circle around the great light in the sky, and are now beginning to swing back to complete the ring, spinning always, the great seas and the vast acres containing numberless bones slipping in and out of light and dark, and so it has ever been since ages ago, back when certain words were spoken.

It’s difficult when I stand in the yard to remember that this bleak patch of hard, rime-painted grass is the same stretch of earth that just a few months ago was so overly-lush that I had to scramble to keep it mowed down, the same expanse of green over which all those blasted snakes crawled and over which hovered all those red wasps and June bugs. And in high summer, I will stand in the same place and think back to how it was today, flat and still and quiet and icy.

I looked up yesterday at the tree under which I park at work, and I noticed that the last leaves had gone. Your children grew up and left you, I thought as I moved beneath her branches. But you’ll have a new  brood in a few months, and won’t they throw a fine shade? The crows, untroubled by bare branches, still sat on the limbs and watched me and called to me when they thought I’d forgotten their crackers.

The full moon is sitting high in the blue expanse up there, watching this earth. There is no sin up there, no wickedness, because there are none of Eve’s progeny crawling across its gunpowder surface. The purity of that satellite in its glow of reflected sunlight contrasts with the filth and avarice that has infected every corner of the earth. And yet, on the first day of winter, there are those down here who daily strive to beat back the darkness, to seek and nurture beauty and truth and strength, to ask in humility for guidance and grace.

I like the hush. In it, I can hear my joints creak like the bare limbs of a tree in a gale. Perhaps my prayers are more easily heard in this chilled stillness. I like to think it is so.

~ S.K. Orr