As Snowflakes Softly Speak

January has arrived, the month that usually brings a bitter chill, and the first whisper of snow. The trees empty of their adorning leaves, as if saving their decorative jewels for the warmth of spring.

As I stare into the gray skies, I wonder how nature can offer so much beauty and serenity even when all is asleep. The birds have fell silent, and the woods are quiet and dull beside the winter wind.

Yet it speaks for anyone who pauses long enough to glance at the ever-present ocean of white. There is a peace, a stillness, enveloped in the quiet, that heeds to a patient ear.

The crystals sing on the tree limbs, and the chime of melting water echoes the silence. The soft patter as I glide over the snow, while my shadow evades me in the hazen sky.

The cold grazes my nose, and as uninviting as it feels on my skin, the beauty is a cunning temptation. I gaze at the horizon as the snow falls gently over me, as if to serenade me with its many steps.

Each snowflake, a fingerprint of nature, its own identity, speaks of how infinite it is. As a star is out of grasp, unreachable, uncountable, so bears the weight of a snowflake. Conversing with me as each gem flutters by, they pass by as moments, and once gone, are never known again.

As they melt in my palms and catch on my lashes, I realize snow must be a glimpse of the heavens, a temporary joy, like stars that fall within my reach.

I will never outgrow the innocent awe that snow gifts to me.

I will but listen more, for the softness that speaks.

''Snow was falling,

So much like stars

Filling the dark trees

That one could easily

Imagine its reason for

Being was nothing more

Than prettiness.''

-Mary Oliver

''I'll walk along this winter path,

between the fields and sky,

and linger with the old oak trees

that never question why

I'm out here in the silence,

or where I'm going to,

Or if there is a reason

for the wandering I do.''

-Ellis Nightingale (Winter Path)

''In winter the stars seem to

have rekindled their fires,

the moon achieves a fuller

triumph, and the heavens

wear a look of a more

exhalted simplicity.''

-John Burroughs (The Snow-Walkers)

When the wind of winter blows

Over the uplands and moonlit spaces

Come ye out to the waste of snows

To the glimmering fields

And the silent places

-L.M. Montgomery

White Noise-

In all the world

There's nothing like

The sound of falling snow-

The only noise

I've ever known

That makes the clocks move slow;

The only sound

That sweeps away

The din of city streets;

And wraps around,

In soft embrace,

'Most everyone it meets;

A sound that's not

A sound at all-

A quiet, soft and dear,

That comforts all

The sleepy souls

Who sit, and watch, and hear.

-''Excerpt from 'Suzie Bitner was Afraid of the Drain' by Barbera Vance.''