What happens now? I asked of Winter.
There is no heat in the sun’s rays. Trees are naked.
Fierce winds carry shards of ice. The voices I strain to hear
Are silent forever now. What’s the script?
What am I meant to do?

Winter, with a scarce-felt fracturing of frost,
Smiles a chill smile, whispers in the wind:
There is nothing you are meant to do. Who knows
How things will be? Be still. Wait.

But I am cold to the bone.
Silence echoes around me.
I chase cold sunbeams,
Look for gold in rainbows and find none.
How will I out-run the freezing of my heart?

I do not know, says Winter,
But I’ll be with you when
You go down to those cold corners
Where under snow and frozen soil
Quiet fermenting and slow gestation
Tick by unperceived;
Where in water beneath the ice, life softens,
Grows drowsy,
Where transformation is incremental
(Too slow to see, too distant to hear)
And seeds swell, shape-shift and shrug off
Chains of dormancy, shattered by cold,
And all is movement in stillness.

See the fire igniting in the ice?
This is not the time of dying.
It is un-reckoned with beginnings.
What happens now? I cannot tell you.
But I will warm you while we wait.