A December Night.

It’s snowing, or approximating snow as it does in these parts.  The darkness outside the kitchen window is populated by fleeting visions of white, whirling, driven, then gone like thoughts, to be replaced by others doing different dances, now fast and frantic, then slow and lazy, drifting aimlessly earthward before catching a gust and getting gone.

The wind rises, pours past like a rushing river, a torrent of souls bound for who-knows-where, each fleck and flake bursting into existence and as suddenly vanishing, taking its moment in time with it, never to return.

Out beyond the kitchen window prayer flags beat themselves to shreds, giving up ghosts of frayed filaments for the old folks with no living friends, the working Joes with no jobs, the children whose futures are as dusty and hungry and pointless as their pasts.

Inside, the quavering whistle of the singing tea-pot reels me back from the beyond, back to the now of the night, the need for another log in the wood stove, the realization of just how blessed my penny-counting life is in a world where warmth in winter is a fabled commodity.

I’m grateful for the cold, and grateful that it’s out there.