winter’s bone.

[pieces&thoughts.]

The victims of the Tucson shooting, a tragic murder in OKC. Dear friends who lost their baby; friends who never had a chance to conceive. Those who continue to grieve death of mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers. The deaths that are happening again and again with no justice. Much death, much winter. It is difficult to understand, difficult to form prayers.

Winter’s bone: there is death, cold, quiet, loneliness, bitter, sleep, dark. Yes, there is that. And believe me, it is cold days like these when I cannot get my toes to ever warm up, as the sun sets so early, that I honestly feel like spring will never come.

Every year the cold feels colder, and I forget what the warm sun on my skin is like. Don’t you remember, silly girl? Spring comes every year, melting the cold, kissing our bodies again. We have hope that the roots under the snow, under the dormant branches, are breathing a life, pumping a blood, recreating cells – it will all come to bear fruit in the spring.

[read.]

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

– Wendell Berry

WINTER TREES

All the complicated details

of the attiring and

the disattiring are completed!

A liquid moon

moves gently among

the long branches.

Thus having prepared their buds

against a sure winter

the wise trees

stand sleeping in the cold.

– WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

For more poetry to see you through winter’s dark months: Poetry of Deep Winter

[listen.]

Death is promised to the bee who’s sting protects the colony

Was it’s life worth nothing more than honey for the queen?
Life is a branch and it is a dove, handcrafted by confusing love.
Sign language is our reply, when church beels make no sound.
In hollow towers and empty hives, we craved sweetness with a fear of heights.
Was it all just a grain of sand in and hourglass? 

The smartest thing I’ve ever learned is that i don’t have all the answers,
Just a little light to call my own.
Though it pales in comparison to the overarching shadows,
A speck of light can reignite the sun and swallow darkness whole.

Death is a cold, blindfolded kiss.
It is the finger pressed upon our lips.
It puts an unwanted emphasis on how we should have lived.
Life is a gorgeous, broken gift.
Six billion+ pieces waiting to be fixed.
Love letters that were never signed, sent to where we live.

But the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard is that i don’t have to have the answers,
Just a little light to call my own.
Though it pales in comparison to the overarching shadows,
A speck of light can reignite the sun and swallow darkness whole