Beholder's eye

During the last warm season I found great peace in the beauty of nature.

With the onset of cold and dark and brown and gray, that placid joy faded. I tried to see the glory of the structure of the trees, rather than relying on the splendor of the color and sound of leaves, but my senses reveled in neither the sturdiness nor the intricate turnings of naked branches.

And then, the ice came...

....and coated every blade of grass,

every seedpod,

every stone and branch.

The fingers of the trees, silver-limned, became, once again, breathtaking.

Light, fractured in a million sparkling and glinting prisms.

In the quiet, a slight breeze,

the sound of crisp taffeta crinolines.

Everywhere I looked and heard, Beauty.


Just when I felt abandoned and hopeless.

That's how Life is.