snowman in full lotus

I stepped outside to feel the cold air of a few minutes past midnight, and rediscovered the silent appeal of tiny unexpected snowflakes floating through orange streetlights. After too many images of the lonely far away war on television, the sweet silence brought me together again through the graceful solitude that sweeps each of us away from time to time.

None of us knows exactly what to do, but our government keeps sending young men and women to damage and get damaged in the shifting sands of a war without end. The tiny eyes of the talking heads who take no risks keep shining out in increasingly high definition, while some people somewhere write headlines to gloss over the casualties who return home to suffer. The more numerous the words about bloodshed, the more hollow it all becomes and healing slips silently out under the crack below the door.

Smooth cold asphalt is a monolith under my shoes. I can feel the interconnected impermeable slab of contiguous paving that probably connects me to you right now wherever you are in North America. Barefoot in a snowdrift, the grey snow at the edges of curbs appears almost comforting in that way that it fits neatly in my cupboards of memory. Sometimes I'm toughened by fatigue and watch the pale clouds of midnight in just a t-shirt and jeans from the sidewalk outside, thick-skinned soles affording me ten or fifteen minutes of unmitigated communion with the nighttime hum of a civilized wilderness. Then my feet chill through to the bones of my heels so I retreat to carpet and wool socks inside, sipping rooibos tea the color of creamy rust and vacantly smile out the windows.

Where can we journey together, you and I, across spring lakes cold from recent melted ice, summers of sweaty knee-high grass and checkered picnic blankets under shady oaks, autumns of rich spicy apples and crumbling orange maple leaves, winters of bright rigid icicles and long nights made short by well-loved quilts, and spring again for unfolding creased and spotted maps to chart this year's tillage over last year's fallow hollows? Life without cycles is unimaginable, and summer is never too far away when we make lentil stew together and dance. We can honor February while hurrying it out the door to call March and see if it wants to go out dancing with April. May is coming to town soon, a visit to look forward to before June comes and unpacks childhood delights in the backyard. For this sweeping procession, our music is the food of love and seeing your face each morning over steam rising from mugs brings me some transcendence.

Our planet spins swiftly and keeps on carousing around the sun without regard to our tiny consciousness bubbles. So let's think less about war and fear, make snowcones in the park, and delight in the solar radiation that does reach our not-so-epic rock even in the winter. Spring will be here soon to ensure that we forgive and forget and begin again.