EARTH'S RESURRECTION. The whole night the rains came, thawing every bit of frost in this Portland earth of mankind. The grass and pine needles and skeleton twigs of willows found their strength to assemble a welcome committee for the winter sun whose rays are as cold as the quivering earth. The morning mist has learned to surrend to the entreaties of the tardy sun, and now, puddles of thawed frost, now as liquid as liquid can be, have formed to become reflecting pools, the bones of otherwise verdant foliage in the springtime right on the surface of these fragile bodies of cold water, the reflection a happy balance of black and white, of images and the real object imaged by them. There is a certain fragility in all these, and as I sip my first morning Seattle brew touted as the 'people's best', I think of life's seasons and blessings and grace and grit and greatness. Not far away from these 'things-in-themselves' is a thought about what to write next. And not far away too is the gurgling stream so gay with its winter dance. It moves, this stream, as it seeks the level of its seas. It moves, as it seeks to go back to its heavens so that in due time, it can come down to earth again a stream outside my winter window in the years ahead. SW Vermont, 27 Dec 2016.
