Winter Solstice

My eyes scan the desolate landscape and I shudder as a cold wind sweeps the dried leaves across the garden's floor. I hadn't been here in ages—so it seems. The silent of darkness, like a shroud, wraps the garden when I leave the house every morning; yet again enveloped by darkness when I return to it...

It is the same, day after day. Days are too short. Nights are too long. And how my heart longs for it... to be there, to live there again, yet, only able to hug it from whatever conform my soul can find behind the window.

I miss it... I miss this dear precious place where I find so much comfort and solace. But I am here today—in the garden. Frozen mist hugs it, obscuring the solitary expanse, and I feel this immense love for it, as if perhaps it were a living thing with a living soul and a heart that, just like mine, can feel and it can cry and love and let it self be loved.

It murmurs hushed words, like lovers do, and I can hear it breathing and feel its loneliness as if it were my very own... a little chickadee trapped in longings so deep. But then I realize that today is the Winter Solstice; a day of rebirth—of renewal. It won't be too long now. Longer days will return, tip toeing slowly the sun will return; the song sparrows will start to sing again...