Winter Song

I declare it is officially winter. Daylight seeps stealthily from the sky, quieted by the steely chill of night’s early arrival. The air is heavy and wet and leaden with a slow sense of departure. Darkness slips shadows around the sun. It’s easy to sink into the weight of winter’s sorrow. It seems natural. Time slows. Quiet settles with the cold.

I want to curl up inside the warm belly of childhood rememberings. I miss the way life floated carelessly, weightlessly and with abandon. I miss the damp carpet smell of my basement and the way the cold stucco walls felt against my skin. I miss the sweet little vases my mom filled with lily of the valley, a few stems plucked from the backyard then tucked into corners of the house – on a bedside table, in the windowsill of the bathroom. I miss the way our kitchen felt at the end of the night as we turned off the lights to go upstairs, the lingering smell of dinner and the day's activities settling into the stillness as our house descended into sleep. And the muffled sound of my parents voices, their closet rolling open and closed through the wall as I drifted off.

Life is impermanent. Damn that’s scary. The sky darkens, earth freezes, leaves fall from the trees, flowers wilt into the ground. Time keeps moving. We’re getting older. There is no evading this. It is so easy to get stuck here, swallowed up by it, settling into the void, cozying up to it like an old friend. Ah yes, sweet sorrow, I know you well. The weight of this burden is heavy.

How to rise above? We have to look outside ourselves and let the energies of life stir their counterparts within. We have to look to the darkened sky that will soon glow blue; the frozen earth that will melt and warm with the sun; the wilted flowers and leaves that crumble into the soil and bloom again come spring. We have to listen to the rhythm of life’s pulse; it is endlessly in cycle. We too are endlessly in cycle. We rise and fall, pick ourselves up and stumble again.

It is life's symphony, always in chorus, perpetually in motion. We need to learn to let the melody carry us, no matter how dark or dismal or cold it seems. Don't judge it. Just listen. Breathe. Let it go. You are never alone. All that you are made of beats in rhythm with the sun and the moon and the sky. Your spirit dances with the wind and the stars and the branches of the trees. Breathe into it. Quiet your mind. Be at peace, and wait for the season to change.