When ghostlike fog wraps
itself around your arms,
be wary if you stay.
There is temptation
to welcome softness, allow
a mantling about and through
palms outstretched,
fingers sans raiment.
But its demands are fierce.

There is impregnable beauty
if you do pause as cold
descends stilling fog’s path.
Majesty in each mounded
crystal cling, appendages
knitted one to another,
a new glove and cloak.
Astonishment in delicacy,
an artistry in lethal cold.

I reach to you,
as trees on winter mornings,
undone. My once summer
facade laid bare,
a deathly inevitability.
No longer hiding my array,
I am yours to draw,
an artist’s form
for you to mold and pattern me,
a remarkable fragment of
your bewildering eternity.

.

.

.

It’s not always easy to see grace.

It is in letting go of what we think we are that we become what we must be.

You see, sometimes the Divine is not warm and fuzzy. Sometimes our Holy One comes through cold and harsh demands that make it difficult to realize the beauty unless we still ourselves and take the time to acknowledge it and experience it for what it is.

Nature is a threshold into the Divine. The snow crystals on tree limbs in early January were astounding. Fog hung thick as the bitter cold arrived. The fog, no longer able to stay afloat, settled on trees and turned into new forms of winter wonder. Many photos of this found their way into my life. My friend, Dorothea Madry, graciously allowed me to use her photo to pair with today’s poem.

Enjoy the cold. The barren trees. The icy mounds. You never know what gifts they bring.

Lexanne

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