Category: Winter Ballads

When I stepped from the thick brush into the clearing,
the rustic wooden footbridge across the narrow ravine
almost escaped my notice, so leaf-strewn was it,
so at home among the pines. I paused half way
from one side to the other, thinking how the bridge
was like the moment between breaths, the one
that smooths this Now to the next, and how
there’s always sunlight up ahead, even when
you’ve been a long while in a dark and tangled woods.

Subtlety asks that you tune your attention,
sharpen it to see the layers and the play
of them, the way one folds into another
and contrasts with the next, and how
the whole is made beautiful by their dance.

On this day, when the sky powders down love
in its most tender colors, let us sit on the tree’s
highest branches and bask in its song. Let us hear
its notes waft down, surrounding every twig,
every limb, every eye and beak and feather.
Let us watch as every being below feels
Its soft caress. And when our hearts are brimming
with its splendid, endless joy, let us fly forth,
singing its song.

Sometimes when I am among the pines
I think to tilt my head all the way back
to look up at the tops of them, laughing
as they drink the sky. I don’t do this often.
The textures of their bark, the heaps
of fallen needles and cones, the baby trees
springing from the soil beneath them
so entrance me that it is all I can do
to take in the wonders immediately
before me. But sometimes, the shrill call
of a crow falls all the way down
to where I am standing and I trace
the sound to a branch high above me.
Instantly, I am in awe, as if I had discovered
a forgotten world where ancient ones dwell,
conversing with each other, swaying in joy
as as they pass their stories around.
What the wind told them. What the jays
had to say, and the squirrels. Who came
to the woods that day, who found the gifts,
who noticed the hidden treasures, who
left treasures and gifts of their own,
how glad the lake is now that the geese
have arrived to scout out nesting places.
And all of this goes on so easily, as if
the troubles of the world were of no concern
at all. But then they have been here
a very long time and seen much, and choosing
to sing with the wind has allowed them
to rise above us all and to drink the sky.

“I love the watching how the buds on the trees
are beginning to swell,” she said, taking me by surprise.
I hadn’t noticed. She’s farther south, I said to myself.
Surely I would have noticed, the softening of the tree line
being one of my favorite late-winter sights.

But the next morning, as I passed a favorite maple,
I saw that she spoke truly. It was indeed fuzzier
than it had been the week before. Say what you want,
Jack Frost. The ancient one in the pasture tells
the long-range tale: Spring is coming, regardless.

I want to wrap packets of the peace of this place
in gossamer wishes and offer them to the fragrant air
to carry to the hearts of all who are in pain this day.
May you be filled with the strength of these trees, I say,
lifting cupped hands, and with their endurance.
May your spirit be filled with the calm of this lake
and with its gladness. May these shafts of sunlight
remind you that shadows are a part of the dance,
passing phantoms, anchored to nothing. This peace
floats above and beneath and between all you see.
And I send it to you, that you may be healed,
that you may be free.

Snow melts on the mossy log
telling the tale:

The dance of winter’s yin and yang
is at its balance point.
Neither holds sway.
Things can tip either way
and will, for days.

Spring’s advance
makes fools of us all.

Happiness, I was thinking today, while floating
in its midst, is such a simple thing. And yet
how hard we work to find it; how we make it
so complex. I laughed. It was either that, or cry.
It was so plain, in this silken moment, that
happiness isn’t something you strive to obtain
as much as something into which you relax.
We don’t increase our experience of it
by adding more things, or drama, or complications
to our lives, but by releasing the things that stand in its way.
We don’t have to dig for it, or climb towards it,
or run after it with a net. We can simply breathe.
We don’t have to hunt it down; it’s everywhere.
We don’t have to build or create it; it already is.
Right here. Right now. Like air. Like light.
It’s not something we have to earn, or win, or deserve.
It’s already ours, given to us as freely and naturally
as our lives are given, as much a part of us as the blood
that flows through our veins, the oxygen that courses
through our lungs, the spark and crackle of the joyous song
of movement continuously playing through muscle and nerve.
And all that blinds us to it is the make-believe of stories
we tell ourselves and our dream that things are otherwise.

Such a ripping of the air!
Such a cacophony of sound!
All at once, from nowhere,
a flock of geese splashes down.
The waters leap up to meet
webbed feet. Wings flap
and fold. And before I can
even catch my startled breath,
they’re settled, and silent,
and floating as if they’d been there
for hours, as if their grand entrance
hadn’t awakened entire worlds.

The ice had barely finished forming
when the wind came, and with it
pine needles and a troop of leaves
rushing to the lake with joyful abandon,
landing on its solid, thrilling cold,
and the ice giving way only enough
to hold them where they could see
the heights from which they had flown
and the wide, unobstructed sky’s light.
Below them, beneath smooth rocks,
fish dreamed of the music of forming ice
and the laughter of pine needles and leaves.