How do we wait for the new year’s arrival?
Fire burning day and night,
pots littering the top of the wood stove,
turning up their noses
at the full kitchen upstairs.
I once burned old letters here
as the year turned,
blazing through endings;
now the purple-gold glow
is our small share of the sun’s
wild energies captured
to keep our winter bones warm.
Polar temperatures, I’m learning,
have their own variations:
today is bright and windless.
I pad in winter moccasins and snowshoes
through the soft snow,
like a child in the warmest slippers;
no colder than the mice
who leave their small trails
scattered under the cedars,
tunnel down underneath it all,
and survive.
Inside there is tea and soup,
and I take it in slowly.
The contours of my heart are rounded,
both spacious and full, its rhythms
keeping pace with my life.
I hold the hot soup of this moment
in my cold hands, note its arrivals and leavings,
the newborn child of its entrance,
the small swift bird of it lifting its wings
to take off.

From 100 Words: The Beauty of Brevity. Word prompt: arrival. Day 97, New Year’s Eve.