Rising

One by one, muted lights dab through a predawn fog. During the night a thunderstorm's ovation dropped in and out of my sleep. How misplaced the rain is in December. How unmanageable the gray. With morning, the hush knows what I know.

Sunday eventually lifts from the stove with soup and roasted asparagus. Affection. Attention. Maybe apprehension. I see it all through because existence demands it.

Love as a messenger swings the gate inward to invite the loss of time and tears and unknowing. Caught off guard by the billowing comfort of a chesty fullness, I sit for long stretches as if basking in some unseeable light. An awareness of beauty has begun to sharpen and seems to have no resting place; it simply rises from everything that must die. What is pursued, what is expected, what is defined, what is captured must perish. In this death, one forfeits purpose and motive and usefulness to finally see. Beauty. And where there is beauty, there is love.

white pine waving
woodsmoke on the rise
winter loves me, loves me not