Winter Walk

The bunny understands about long walks in the winter night. The solitude can be amazing and devastating. Darkness offers an anonymity not achievable in daylight and a perspective nearly free from fear of discovery. On the black velvet canvas of the night, colors become more vibrant and rich because they must glow to be seen at all. However, it takes a strong will and determined mind not to be swallowed by the pitch black and the indigo blue of the seemingly endless night.

As I walked tonight, I stood apart, observing the warm lights of Christmas decorations and suddenly more golden glow of the street lights, winking off and slowly returning to full power in their nocturnal cycle. Yet, I was connected to it all somehow, as though my footfalls were heard by the night and my footprints remembered, though they would be invisible soon under the falling snow...

Mick

Winter Walk

Bright glimpses of lamplight break window panes,
Dancing past snowflakes that scatter and blow,
Winter dust fractured by silver/gold stains,
And frosty blown crystal gems gleam and glow -
Surrounding a gray man, a dark ship a-sail,
A ghostly galleon on seas of white.
Streetlights define a form, shadowed and pale,
Drifting through eddies of swift swirling light.
Though I walk through winter night's silent tomb;
Rimy cold, unalloyed in its starkness,
I'm not a shadow in deepening gloom,
I am not just a hole in the darkness!
My footsteps, though muffled in drifting snow,
Touch winter's long memory as I go.

Mick McKellar
December 2007