Winter Solstice

Clear and five degrees.

Perfectly still this solstice morning,
in bone-cracking cold. Nothing moving,
or so one might think, but as I walk the road,
the wind held in the heart of every tree
flows to the end of each twig and forms a bud.

~Ted Kooser
from Winter Morning Walks: one hundred postcards to Jim Harrison




I'm getting out decorations for the little tree. I opened a tiny decoration, a little mouse with a candy cane, given to me by my Mom. I cried. Right after that I opened another tiny little ornament, a bell in the shape of a little caroler wearing a red suit. My grandmother tied her on my white tissue paper wrapped package every year when I was a little girl. I smiled. I hadn’t anticipated finding these memories in the ornament boxes today. These women are gone now from the face of the earth, but still in my heart.