Poem: Warm Winter’s Eve

Warm Winter’s Eve

It’s as though Beauty has Nature wrapped around her little finger today.
A warm winter’s eve has brought two yellow butterflies dancing with a dozen white snowbells blooming on the shrub outside my window.
A daring, new-growth branch waves above its tree’s top in a playful breeze.
The leaves are still affixed – is this an evergreen oak?
Yet in the middle of my window scene looms a thorny ornamental devoid of any foliage, its spiky limbs a nude sculpture.
It remains the only hint of December.

I love this month.
My joy must spring from when I was a spark floating and flitting in my mother’s womb, readying for the birth, anticipating the adventure ahead.
For me, December holds that eagerness of the next… the next birth, the next step, the next year.
I’m in “are we there yet?” mode as I move through the days of December.
I yearn to embrace my Now – slow my heart and head just a tad – but I can’t help myself.
I want to know and do and decide and wake up the cave and party.
I want to shoot forward, not hibernate.

Caught in the human condition, I could be betwixt and between what I am supposed to do and what I am compelled to do.
And what a cross that would be!
But this is the season, and it is my reason.
I am the compelling resolution.
I am a wee bit of spring in winter’s bosom.

–Angela Loëb; December 20, 2008