after the blazing dies

Christmas came and went in a blur. It was lovely, and we gave and received muchly, all with deep gratitude and joy, as is befitting this winter celebration of the dying year, and the world's rebirth...

Now this year is almost over, and I, for one, am glad. Everything has turned out well, but still...it's been hell, and I'll be glad when it's behind me.

I'm looking forward to January, that cold, grey month of thin light and long shadows and the low, low sun.

Burning the Old Year

BY NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.   

Notes friends tied to the doorknob,   

transparent scarlet paper,

sizzle like moth wings,

marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,   

lists of vegetables, partial poems.   

Orange swirling flame of days,   

so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,   

an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.   

I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,   

only the things I didn’t do   

crackle after the blazing dies.

scattered widely through the air

I awoke yesterday morning to snow falling. I lay in bed longer than I should have, watching the swirling flakes through the open window, awash in the quiet that even the lightest flurry seems to bring, that profound hush.  Cooper perched at attention on the edge of the bed, staring out the window, growling long and low, clearly convinced that the snow couldn't be trusted.

We've had flurries on and off today. The palette of grey sky and white flakes is perfection.

 

 

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 A few feathery flakes are scattered widely through the air, 

and hover downward with uncertain flight, 

now almost alighting on the earth, 

now whirled again aloft into remote regions of the atmosphere.

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

http://confessionsofasineater.blogspot.com/

life springs ever green

all images, Alex MacArthur, via http://greigedesign.blogspot.com

All theory, dear friend, is gray, 

but the golden tree of life springs ever green. 

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 

http://confessionsofasineater.blogspot.com/

mix the light into gray

It's been snowing here, on and off, for what seems like weeks, broken here and there by a few days of unseasonable warmth so there's no accumulation. The sky is gray with clouds, and the air is white with snow. It suits me, this enchanted melancholy.

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It's an art to live with pain... mix the light into gray. 

- Eddie Vedder

http://confessionsofasineater.blogspot.com/