Winter has been stripping leaves, stripping souls, preparing for its arrival.  Now it is here.  It fills the air with its chill, with its emptiness, with its bare beauty.  This is the season of waiting.

Hot water,
hot shower,
warming my skin,
warming my soul
that is holding
my body.

I am bathed
in warmth,
I absorb it
from the water,
together we enjoy
the happiness of heat
on a cold and ordinary
day.

Awake, awake, blow wide the curtains of the mind and scoop up scattered thoughts. 

Awake, awake, beat furrows in the murkiness and mud and prepare the seed for harvest. 

Awake from our houses and fences and safety, awake from our darkness and sleeping and winter, awake now for spring is here.  It is bursting through the air from dark clouds, it is budding from the soil in new paint, it is shouting from the trees in green song, it is cutting back the night in fresh dawns.

Awake, awake, there is music if we listen.  There’s a fanfare in the hail, there’s a drumbeat in the rain, there’s a trumpet in the wind, there’s a bugle in the sun.  Spring is come.  The ragged grass and moss are cut, the mud mounds cast by worms are squashed, the branches on the ground are cleared and we are getting ready.  We can smell it in the air, we can feel it on our skin, we can hear it in our feet, spring has come and we are ready!

What a fine line it is, to live in the beauty cresting each moment, to live in the effervescence of life that will flow unbidden if I allow its majesty, the hidden majesty of just being here, now; not to follow its surge of pleasure into plans and dreams, into the busy reaches of thought, or to tip the other way into lurking fear of emptiness, of failure.  I am my own boat to ride its current of stillness.

How can the day not be blessed when we start it together, sharing the sun, sharing the peace?  Here and now, all is well.  There are no concerns or pressures, just light twinkling on a spun web, on a dew-jewelled lawn.  This is not an escape from life, this is sitting in the centre of it from which gratitude and abundance can flow.  I present my soul to the day, to the sun, and I receive theirs back.  We are partners together.