Midwinter

It’s winter again and unseasonably warm. How many more years must we say that? Yet, somehow, I’m still cold. I wish to hibernate like the rest of the natural world, my consciousness slipping soundlessly underground, cradled in the soft earth suspended between the roots of an old oak. Let me rest there for a while.

Instead, we, was human people, must stand witness to the dead, dying, sleeping and snoozing of winter. Above ground, wind-battered and rain-soaked, when we should be snowed in and resting. The dog still wants to be walked, though, so I walk too, and tethered together we slink between the sleeping birch trees and bast in every sliver of sunlight the season affords; waiting for the rest of the world to wake.