Eight degrees

Sparkles of red, blue, and gold twinkle on the pond.  The birds are sunning themselves in the bare trees, trying to catch a little warmth on this frigid morning.  Bright, beautiful sunshine and blue skies have replaced the clouds.  Feet of ice dip their toes into a stream of blue water.  Not everything is frozen.

Day 15.

Merely magnificent*

The sun rises from behind the neighbor’s house,
revealing and warming the trees at the back of the pond
in a blaze of golden-orange light.
Darkness lurks in the woods.

Day 11’s small stone.

*The title for this post is courtesy of the spam I cleared out this morning.  One of them referred to my blogs as “merely magnificent.”  I love the contradiction in terms.

I am

Silvery moonlight streams through the window
and onto the sticky mat
Where I am
Becoming
Space
Expanding
Gliding over the ice
Sohum
(I am that I am)

Riding the moonlight

A January ramble in the woods

The air is crisp and cool, biting on the inhale, an underlying essence of pine carried by the breeze in the coniferous forest.  Sunlight streams through the trees, misty from the thawing snow and ice.  Traversing the swampy and unstable pathways, we tread carefully, occasionally getting mired in the mud.  A joyful January ramble in the woods.

The photo and thoughts are from a hike I took with my husband yesterday.  I’m semi-disconnecting on Sundays and scheduled this to stand in for me until I return on Monday.  A small stone for day 8.

5am

Pulled from sleep, I leave the warmth of the bed, pad barefoot across the cold hardwood floor.  At the window, the golden glow of an almost full moon lights up the sky, and pours  over the icy surface of the pond.  We greet each other in the stillness of early morning, a luminous embrace.

Day 7’s small stone.

Quietude

Winter falls silently across the morning,
a blanket of snow stretches over the dreaming earth.
Unmarked paths of white wait in quietude.

My January 3rd small stone, tossed into the river.

I found this difficult to do today, and had many thoughts about giving up.  It is almost impossible, it seems to me, to capture in words or photos the beauty of the first big snowfall, when the world is hushed and the snowflakes waltz down from the sky, romancing the earth before covering her in winter’s white and sparkling jewels and clothing.

this morning’s passing breeze

Moths in the meadow on a breezy morning

All beings are encompassed within one all-encompassing great energy:  So I understood from the coolness of this morning’s passing breeze.

~ Mumon Ekai

celebrate

Celebrate each season, for you too, are transformed with the turns of the earth.

~ Arthur Dobrin

The land of heart’s desire

I look back with gladness to the day when I found the path to the land of heart’s desire, and thank Fate ceaselessly with a loud voice that she did not permit town to sap all the years away while the heart was turning to wind-voices and flower-faces and the hands of kindly earth.

~ Mrs. George Cran, The Garden of Ignorance, 1913

Love is

(Apple blossoms.)

Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand.

~ Mother Theresa