We are in winter

This is the season.  The long wait in the dark begins.  The trees are truly dead.  Branches fall and I look in wonder.  I can not believe they will breath again. I can not believe they store the life of March and months warmer.  Darkness falls before the earth can warm.  The day passes painlessly, without a moment's thought, but the devil is the repetition.

The house is closing into itself.  Our dwelling of warmth is quiet.  The chicken's cooing within the hutch in the yard, the rain patters in the desolate garden, and smell of our ever laboring oven fogs the windows.  We are done with the outside world for this year.  Ready to rest. Ready to let our leaves go.  To die for a season.  Soup, and silence.

Morning is maker for a dark night in which to begin.  Morning is the cold that must be ventured into, the rain that must be tasted. We are ready to cry a season.

Winter is dying.  The last season.  The death who does not promise to resurrect, we enter in.  Into darkness we walk without the sun set before us.  Winter is the end, the colors of last year passed, the freedom of a summer passed.  It is the giving, it is the taking, it is the end.

And all that we ran in daylight, all the roar and rush of the months behind us.  All the fire and youth and laughter, hushed.

Hushed for a season of wait,
    hushed for a moment to contemplate,
        hushed until we are outlasted by the darkness,
until silence can be stood no more.


Passion waits within the warm earth bellow.
Dawn holds its breath to rise.
The color of spring prepares to dance again.

The praise of a new morning from the cold broken hallelujah waits to erupt.  The simple birth of a savoir waits for Calvary's unity.  The life in the the dead of winter waits for the final glory.  The darkness starts the greatest story.  That when we could not hope another night.  When we could not remember warmth of sun, we remember.

How an Emanuel came in decent.
Advent
the waiting.
Until we can not dream of ascending up to Him,
can our hearts can receive without pride.
The Hope of Glory.

108 days to holy week.

Winter

We are in Winter.
The trees have gasped, their leaves departed.
The rain has greened, the world again around us.
Quenched the world's lips but intends to stay.
It rolls in with the light of morning,
tapping its fingertips across the roofs at night,
coughing a cold wind, refusing to be ignored.

We throw ourselves into our harness,
the climb up icey roads,
sloshing through the mud of new days,
on old roads,
re-traversed,
the work begins.

Darkness falls.

A day becomes a moment,
an hour requires so much breathing,
plumes of steam we breath
chugging up the tracks well marked.
Forward.

Darkness falls,

Night so long we live it as day,
the chill our feet cannot heat our of the blankets,
sorrow that waits not to be scene in sun,
longing that is waiting for the passage of time.

We wait.
in whisper.

The darkness forgets the sun tomorrow
the darkness is the dawn that greets us as light is all too fleeting
we can not wait for her.

We wait,
until hope is not a smile or phrase,
not a thought to grow fond of.

No,
it is like the drum of rain,
it is the slosh of the puddles at our ankles
it is the wet that has soaked our shoes and does not dry
it is the chill that nips quickly to your nose
but last long in your bones

Hope lasts
though we no longer whisper.
No song of victory waits before us.
Darkness of darkness,
pass the life we could sing.

Death before us,
and all the ice deep within,
does not pray the prayers of sin.
It does not comfort,
or patently plead,
in silence it longs
for darkness to recede.

It is not hope from hearts sent
nor is it good will from men to men.

Oh but hope!
Hope beyond the call of joy,
beyond the eyes that reckon the void,
beyond the chill that causes our quakes
beyond the tears the wind does make.
Hope beyond the anguish and angst,
beyond the memories that have all but stayed.

We are in winter,
death and dark not staved.
We are in winter,
mud to trudge unpaved.
We are in winter,

a night.