Another Year Passes

Tonight, watching that thin-lipped moon pause in a deep turquoise sky over a particularly garish expanse of Christmas lights, I was reminded of something my dear friend Michael Totty pointed out back when we were in High School - we put up pretty lights and sparkling tinsel in mid-winter because we have lost the ability to see the more subtle manifestations of natural beauty that the season has to offer. I still believe this to be true and sometimes just want to knock on doors and ask people to please turn that crap off and come out and look at this incredible moon right outside their door, a moon that may never again appear just like this, with this color sky, on this warm winter night, beyond this bare and magnificent tree.

And if you get a chance, find some tall grasses at the end of a sunny winter day, and wait till the sun has just disappeared, and look closely for the glow of the seed heads as they hold that winter sun briefly, faintly, into the coming night.

So, too, does the earth hold us, barely glowing, waiting for spring ...