Bare Limbs.

Something about home in the winter stirs me. Or rather - stills me.
There is no hiding under leafy branches or behind bounteous gardens. Flowers do not vie for attention and bright leaves are brown, fallen, gone. Like the trees, houses are stripped to the essentials. Windows reflect light back and look cold, unseeing. The only pots hold mounds of frozen pansies, huddled together in defeat waiting for a warmer day.
Inside the air is still until a rush of heat moves through, but the heater routinely kicks off and the stillness falls again. Sunlight caresses the dining room table, the kitchen floor, and my steaming coffee cup yet the caresses are chill.
The emotion, the hopes, the thrills of the holidays are gone, not even a left-over cookie remains. And yet I carry all of it forward with me. And now there is time to examine it. To sit beside a cold window and see more than the winter landscape. To see the past year. To see the coming year. To see.
Bare limbs. Bare houses. Bare soul.
Winter stills me--and I'm grateful.