Thursday January 29, 2015 Walk Out to Winter Sun

Sunglasses on
Walk out to winter sun, warmer than ever in January
The neighbor waves, a new puppy is introduced
On past blooming camellias pink and dainty

In sunbeams warmed
Tiny white ribbons, sarcacocca flowers
spice the air
The small dark shiny leaves punctuated
here and there
 by glossy black berries
for the birds, its nectar for the bugs

A sleeping garden, just waking
Nascent snowdrop just emerging
A tight white pearl hanging from an emerald arch.

Up ahead, the shivery anxious skeleton of a tree
Etching dark gray and black against the sun
Its long branches all reaching upward, those lines
   Vibrating
Up from the earth like energy flashing into the sky

I pass violets in sunlight and vinca vines, blue
flowers and curling vine twining round the trunks of trees
And then to encounter a beautiful wintersweet,
  the waxy pale gold flowers so subtle and filled
With the musk of dreams, oriental and exotic.

On homeward, passing the stone-pathed gardens
Gray and black with brush to be cleared in spring
Bright green alive with new growth close to the ground
I spy my garden and see the wild geranium and love-in-a-mist
 breaking the ground with their tender starts
The green swords of narcissus and tulip emerging
The fluttery gold petals and red centers of my witch hazel
 Which never seems to have a scent, so odd

And then, I know
I will plant a wintersweet in the backyard to make up for it.