Winter Walk

Boots squishing through the snow,
Damp pine scent pressing in.
I slog through the powder
My too-big boots flopping
This way and that

Avoiding the headlights of cars,
Careful not to startle drivers
With a puffy-coated figure
On the side of the road.

On this dark, newly wintered night,
Protected from the wind
In the silent alcove of a hill
Tracing the seam of plateau and rise.

And like a cathedral, this architecture
With its strange healing power
Remakes me.  A lightened outlook
Stirs in the soul.

And like this lightness,
Just as this mystery of liquid turned solid
I too turn and condense, coalesce
Into an intricately patterned geometry 
Made possible by the starkness of the winter cold
And its depth and length

And nature's precipitation
Of liquid to solid
May be happening in me
As I, renewed in this
Forced phase-change
By the pressure of the atmosphere
From a labile puddle
To a soft white drift
Of beauty, coating the landscape
Hiding the late autumn scars
Of lack and decay.