Pause
A winter's meditation
Summer is acceleration
chlorophyll sprinting,
sugar loud on the tongue,
Greening and gloating and sharp.
Winter is the brake:
not an end,
a hand on the shoulder,
slow.
We exhale smoke, low and steady.
The house settles into itself:
cold corners, a quilt’s weight,
the wood stove’s animal breath.
Rabbit ghosts stitch the yard
calligraphy in snow.
Under sloughing bark
enoki gather, small lanterns,
downy stipes pressed together
waiting for thaw.
Ice panes over the hollow tree—
a clear eye
looking inward.
Inside:
loam, rot, tangled hyphae
the quiet labor.
Not idle.
Not asleep.
We root.
We listen.
We keep.
Winter is for dens,
for the long attention,
for liminality
between go and stop.
Because stopping is death.
But pause is pulse,
breath keeping time
with firelight shadows
moving across snow.
The days conserve hours.
Dawn arrives slowly,
a bruised yellow
that doesn’t comfort—
only proves
the rhythm, for now.