In a Winter Garden

This first line has been telling itself to me for years. It took complete surrender to my own deep winter to learn to hear the rest. The bones presented themselves to me on a recent winter walk, and I knew the whole piece had arrived.

IN A WINTER GARDEN

In a winter garden when all the bone’s revealed, absent are the sinuously encircling vine and lushly covering green. There is no fragrant flower that gives way to hanging fruit heavy with plumping juice. Nothing to tempt the senses and draw the eye astray.

It’s just bones and marrow, cracks and scars revealing the hidden places of deeper (sometimes darker) truth.

Having gone there willingly and stayed inside Winter awhile, I can attest. It is her darkness with all her bones laid open wide that allows lucent vision to return and expanding chest, once again, to receive a verdant Spring.