The Winter Woods

A blow from an axe resounds through the years

I am a dweller of the forest, of pine trees, where the mysteries of the woods are there to be explored. Winter is its own repose. Here thoughts are crystals, clear, quiet, each as distinctive as the snowflake that settles on the sturdy bough. Sturdy, for want of another word: stoic would be one, strong, defined, unperturbable; the winter forest and its residents are all of these. All except one, the squirrel that lives high on the branches and treats winter as one long siesta, so long that befuddled by the encompassing zen of these long months, squirrels forget where they have hidden most of their food for the oncoming spring feasts. In this way seeds and nuts sprout, germinate into sapplings and the forest takes shape. More than any, the squirrel is responsible for he forest’s pattern of trees.

The woodsmen (it seems a manly endeavor though not only I am sure) may be out, in the coldest days hacking away at trunks and logs — the best time of the year to fell trees, and the deer, too, may be there, scraping through the snow to get at saplings, but still the trees are planted and grow.

the swing of the ax—
pine scent in the silence
of the winter woods