Winter

Could it be that winter is the time of light?

That this dark time is also the time of illumination?

Do you think it was accidental that the first Christians followed the star of wonder, star of light?

Winter is the dark time, yes. No possibility here of zeroing in on the details, of mulling the mechanics of a grasshopper’s flight, or of feeling the plush velvet petals of a purple pansy.

Winter darkness demands 3-D panoramas under star-blown skies.

December calls out for dazzling beams to scour the shadow-shrouded corners of our souls. For sunrises of hammered gold.

For the silhouettes of wind-tossed boughs against a cerulean sky.

We crave the showy, the lively, the definitive. We say, bring it on, bring it all on, and bring it right now.

-- By Elaine, written as prose right after coming in from a pre-dawn run