Today is Winter Solstice, and to my great delight, it's raining at last.
It's a good hard, steady rain
an honest-to-goodness, how-it-used-to-be, Oregon rain.
It's a stay-in-the-house, knit-by-the-stove rain
or, if you prefer, an umbrella rain
a music-in-the-gutters rain
a beautiful, replenishing
thank-the-gods
rain.
Some people rejoice at Winter Solstice because they see it as the beginning of the end of winter dark, but I like even the dark of winter, which isn't really all that dark, anyway:
They say that winter is dark
But look!
The bright gleam of sun-struck silver under glowering dark clouds
Translucent icicles hanging from eaves
Noctilucent clouds on full-moon frigid nights
Waves of bright cloud-drifts in a dark rainstorm
The brilliant scintillations of star-spreads
Jack Frost's overcoat, glittering on fields as the sun comes up
Christmas lights, candlelight, luminous flames in the stove
Even on the darkest day of the year
Winter delights.
And, most of all, there's the hope, maybe even the promise, of snow:
Nothing is so beautiful]
As snow-laden fir boughs against a cobalt sky
The descending blue rushing towards whipped-cream peaks.
Nothing is so beautiful as the kiss of snowflakes
whisper-soft from steel-gray clouds.
Nothing more magical than the inaudible fall of snow outside the window
floating like down from overstuffed clouds
the fire in the stove at your back shining like shook foil
Nothing is so beautiful as a winter landscape
charged with grandeur
and gathered to a greatness
of insuperable cold
unsurpassable silence
unconditional beauty.
