The Silence Beneath Winter's Trees.

One day in December, I walked beneath the wintering trees and listened to their silent voices. Their bare branches rustled in the moaning winds...the sounds were heavenly - like the whispering of angel's wings into an earthly microphone, inviting us to listen. The yearly ritual of cold and chill had begun, it seemed to murmur happily to the filled and unfilled spaces...

I closed my eyes, breathing in the gospel of this blessed earth - how wonderful to be here, in nature - when the music of the universe plays and we dance into the interchange of seasons.

Some trees are laden down with snow, each branch reverently bowed, like a coenobium of ecclesiastical monks in prayer, white-robed and silent.

Winter blankets spread their hands across the land, and everything listens. The trees bend reverently, the rivers slow their course, and the once blue sky rearranges itself into muted colors and shades.

They stand steadfast, bearing the quiet nostalgia of all that has passed.

I braid the quietness of winter with the rhythm of my own ritual - poetic, prayerful and alive.

The season's Ritual does not arrive adorned with fanfare, but with a soft decree.

Nor does it come to herald death - it brings only the sacred pause before life's reemergence and unfolding.

In this unfurling, I begin my own ritual. A clearing away of the remnants of the year’s many peculiarities and idiosyncrasies.

I light a candle - amber and low - and place beside it a bowl of dried fruit, each piece a letting go, of what once was sweet, bitter, or preserved.

Aunt hums a tune while stirring fruitcake batter, a melody that tastes and smells of nutmeg and holiday joy.

Outside, the snow performs its own ceremony - layering the world in a white, laced silence, inviting the living to slow down long enough to hear their forebears walking, chanting the spirits into wind.

I knead dough with my hands, but also with my heart - pressing into it the names of those who taught me how to endure.

I pour eggnog into chipped mugs, and whisper thanks to the ones who kept the fire lit when the world was cold.

Rituals should cradle the visages of our kin, each branch honoring their beauty and grace.

Their limbs, like the trees...encircled with rings of laughter and ache,

each knot someone we embrace, or may barely or never recall.

Each scar a rune of seasons when we dared to bloom.

The snow is not meant to erase, but in its chill, it reveals -

how even the barest bowed down bough

can cradle the weight of what is, and what was loved.

I walk beneath the trees,

a pilgrim of my own remembering,

watching the silence settle in deep

on memories that still burn brightly beneath the frost.

Remembering family and friends far and near.

Of snowball tussles - noisy kids and nosy neighbors

Of just being together, as the holiday enfolds

Soon, the family and friends will begin converging...

They arrived in waves - coats flung over chairs, boots melting by the door, voices already intermingling in the melee.

No one waited for a cue. The house filled like a pot too full, bubbling with stories no one was listening to.

Uncles explaining the history of nutmeg to no one in particular...

Auntie recounting her neighbor’s cat’s uncanny abilities to a room that had moved on to discussing the best way to brine a turkey.

Cousins halfway through tales of yoga instructors and secret lives. But when Auntie passed the sweet potato pie, the story endings were forgotten.

The table groaned under the weight of food and unfinished thoughts.

Fruitcake slices were traded like old and new currency.

Eggnog was poured and repoured, each glass a toast to something only partially remembered.

Children darted between legs, trailing tinsel and crumbs,

while elders nodded at stories they weren’t hearing, smiling at memories they weren’t sharing.

It was glorious.

Anecdoche in full bloom - a garden of overlapping monologues,

where no one needed to be heard to feel known.

Laughter erupted like popcorn - random, warm, and everywhere.

Someone sang a carol off-key. Someone else harmonized with a spoon.

And in the center of it all,

the trees stood quiet,

watching generations collide and commingle,

like spices in a stew that only gets better with time.

Life, lineage, friendships and togetherness blooming,

in a majestic display of Christmas dances on Ice

Auroras adding lovely backdrops of magnificence.

Trees of life, cradled in silence fraught with gentle rituals.

And though the wind may strip us bare,

We remain rooted -

a witness to the quiet grace...

of carrying it all.