Moisture hangs from its grey winter sky
Brown leaves rot relieved on the ground
Sleeping still under winter’s moist blanket
Dreaming up another grand adventure
While ten thousand perfect pearls light
And hang motionless on thin branches
of Japanese Maples and Weeping Birches
Droplets that seem to hold the only light
How do these water droplets gather light?
Crystal drops that feed on flocks of mist
Vibrating weightless in winter’s stillness
Such crisp silence in Winter’s Window
So different from the soft blankets
Of deadening snow – that seem to grow
Flake by flake through winter storms
Covering the world in a deep silence
Making it lean toward white and clean
But Winter’s Window is very different
It is clean but wet and magnifies sound
Until the nameless voice in our thoughts
Or even our own soft whisper sounds loud
Its silence is real – not stolen from the world
For the very first time this year
And in the very last month of it too
True silence has visited and left me
Alone enough to join everything
