Thin Ice

Above us this morning, our sky presents a slight grade less pure, less bright, less still, than the snow on the ground.

A hole in the melting ice on the pond, where no tree overhangs, suggests something must have landed on that thin spot; and a hope blooms, that whoever falls into a pond through the ice will also find a way out.

The ever-lovely pond is full of life and death.

©2013 Ravenna Taylor, "Thin Ice," 2013, oil on canvas, 20 x 22 inches
  Photo: Fernando Gaglianese

My house is quiet, only the sound of the melting outside at my window, or sometimes a mechanism within: the well-pump, the washing machine, a regular beat beneath the irregular "chirp" of birds.

The clock chimes the hour.

We have no Christmas tree or any other decorations around; we haven't done that in many years. We are completely uninterested in holidays generally, religious and retail both, and would always prefer to be working, on something.

I remember when we lived in the Arkansas Ozarks, I used to put a small tree with lights in our tiny house; I would bake cookies and send cards through the mail to friends and family.

From there, alone in the never-finished house we built in the middle of the Ozark National Forest, I would imagine the strings of lights as a cord connecting to people all over the world, comprehensible -- I enjoyed the sense of communion in an abstraction.

Now, people are missing from our families. Sometimes, like a strand of lights with bulbs malfunctioning, the whole strand seems to go dark.

©2013 Ravenna Taylor

Happiness derives from activities that bring a greater sense of purpose or meaning. At a certain point in one's life, one might know just what that means.

No more stand-ins.

 

Heart and hearth - a circle forms, warmed from within, by imagination kindled with memory, sparked by the gemlike innocence of snow.

There are still children.

This recent snowfall is melting on the Solstice; I look forward to the next. I'm hoping for a very white winter this year; I'm hoping for bright crystalline winds to burnish my cheeks.

©2013 Ravenna Taylor

Peace On Earth