Wintertide

Space   between moments  
     are   seconds;   nothing  
lasts forever --
     not even fulfilled promises
 
Natural tattoos of experience:  
  crows feet, laugh lines  
    thin skin, turkey neck --
    consume age, eventually  
 
Life's Wintertide  
  is chronologically clocked  
    by man-made increments  
 
Skeletal bones of leaf
   closeted in half light  
     rattle from spindly limbs
 
Our elephantine steps  
   invade a pristine landscape
disintegrate delicate hoar frost
   under gratitude's weight  
 
Condensed exhalations
  crystallize as One breath
entwines our presence
   as a stationary forest  
 
We are rooted trees --
  cyclic in circumstance
 
Earthlings neither jubilant
   nor anguished
   by seasonal aggregates
 
Deep into hibernation  
  we understand dormancy
    as process, not Death
 
Evolutional transformation;
    a gestating experience
    of third-dimensional Universe:  
      
Passivity disguised  
   in the Valley of the Wise  
~