It comes to soothe and quiet us, to smooth our rough places, to soften our hard edges.  It kisses our cheeks and eyelashes.  It rides our breath and melts into our being, nourishing us with its purity, filling our hollows.

It cannot help but come to us.   Our hearts keep lights for it in their windows.  Just as the earth is to snowflakes, so are our hearts love’s home.

Deny it to no one, to nothing; love that is conditioned isn’t love at all.

Call to the sun.  Ask it to release every frozen bit of you.  Ask it to teach you fearlessness and joy.

You are as real as the tree, and no more, as real as its reflection in the still pond and as the pond, and no more.

The transient is just that, and is no less for its impermanence.  Its experiences make their indelible marks on our souls, and that is why we come: to gather that which can be gathered no other way.

That is the enchantment of this place and the bliss of it.

It rides the winds and plays through the boughs of the trees.  It skims along roadways and fields, and into all the cities and towns, swooping through doorways and windows.  There’s no holding it back.

It’s come to make its home in you, to pour itself into your mouth, to ride the air into your lungs, to drench your very cells with its sweetness and its power.

Shhhh.  Just listen. Breathe it out.  Breathe it in.  Be the song, wordless and singing.

So the year’s first child leaves us, her last sun pouring down its golden rays in benediction on all our bright dreams.

Tomorrow the next one will come toddling in, brand new, its arms gift-laden.

Their visits are so brief and fleeting.  And each gives us its all–seconds, minutes, hours, days–to do with as we please, to make whatever choices we will, as they unfold their weather and usher along the seasons.

Oh, January!  How we heralded your birth!  You, the bringer of fresh hopes and renewed aspirations.

Forgive us for how quickly we forget them, and know that your life force will stir them again and again as your siblings come with new chances.

For all the beauty and dreams you brought us, our thanks.  Farewell, beautiful January.  Farewell.

So deep is her sleep that she appears lifeless, her spacious curves lying there, unmoving, under the broad sky.  But beneath the thin blankets of last year’s crops and grasses, she calls the tomorrows into form.

Birds’ nests dance inside her, and baby rabbits in their burrows.  She dreams the ants coming forth and the dandelions, the tadpoles, the snakes and the fishes.

And through it all, the song of the Great Yes weaves in melodious ribbons and blesses her, and she sighs at the sweetness of it all and sleeps.

She had, she wanted us to know, heard the wishes of our hearts.

She heard the way we yearned for the beauty of the crystalline fairylands that the frost painted on our windows.  She caught our desire to be lost in the dazzle of new fallen snow.

She smiled in tenderness at our wonder over the pastel puffs of clouds that danced on the sunset sky, and at the colors of the rainbow that she had stretched across the fields.

Soon, she would be leaving.  But she could not go without giving us one final gift.

And so, with one sudden wave of her wand, just as the sun was setting, January combined all those elements that had brought us such joy into one, quick, wondrous gift.  And it transformed the land and made our hearts sing.

We ate heaps of scrambled eggs and spread our toast with red jam, not so much for the flavor, but because we were starving for color.  The late night TV had promised snow.  Even that would be a break in the monotony.   But none came.

And noon was no cheerier than morning as it dragged its long hours across the threshold.  We resigned ourselves to the dreariness and went about our tasks with all the industry that we could muster.

Outside, as if it was rushing our subliminal prayers to the gods, a wind began to sweep through the trees.  And as if in answer, the clouds broke into puffs and the day spread its last light, bright and golden over the final hours of the day.  And we gathered great armfuls of thanks and hurled them into the cold air, laughing, and grateful, and glad.

“Ice,” said the voice in my head as I glanced at the puddle.  “Tea,” it said, noticing how the sticks intersected.  I laughed out loud.

The labels go on and on and on, from the moment we learn the words.  I suppose it keeps us anchored in the world somehow.

Then the words trigger memories and dreams.  So although it is late January and I am standing in freezing rain, in my mind I am gazing at fields of tall, green corn on a hot, windless day in mid-July, and it is not rain but perspiration running down my cheeks, and I hear the tinkle of ice cubes in a tall glass of tea and smell lemon.

I splash through it to the bank of the green, swollen creek and its roar rises to meet the falling rain.  Even the drenched air cannot mute it, though it wraps itself, cloud-like, around every twig and fills all the spaces.

The light is like ground pearls, milky and luminescent.  It laughs as it rides the rushing waters, as it slides down the naked braches and over the leathery surface of the leaves.

In town, people hurried along beneath black umbrellas, their shoulders hunched, their eyes cast down to the drab sidewalks, blind to the rivers of light that ran down the gutters.

But here, the colors glow, and the world is raining beauty.