All year long, the tree turns. Not like a wheel, but by showing us the circle of life. The seasons are easy to recognize when you observe a tree.

There is an enormous copper beech outside my window I see as a friend. Not as strange as you might, at first, think because it’s visible throughout the day. What, or who, you encounter most often affects you. They influence the way you think and feel.

The beech tree, so resplendent in a crown of cinnamon much of the year, is bare-branched come December. Its beauty currently stems from how it shelters many wild birds and animals. I watch squirrels scamper along it and note a pair of crows who nested earlier and have made a family. …

The dull sky leans low, heavy with water, Copernicus gets edgy. Perhaps he’s heard some dogs don’t go for walks in the rain. He sits on the staircase to watch the little lane outside through the window.

He eagerly shifts from left-to-right paw. Ears pricked, and nose aiming where he wants to go, he throws me a glance as I type.

“It’s almost time, you know?”

“Yes. I know. Just let me finish this.”

“I want to pen a Christmas poem before we go out,” I say.

Luckily, since I’m poem-bound, he does the job for me. …

At first,
love is shy.
It tiptoes,
trying not to unsettle the foliage.
It aches with longing and whispers,
scattering the thicket with rose petals and mint.

Come summer,
love is wildest.
It rages through the forest on winged hooves,
thundering under the sun.
It bursts with fresh buds and roars,
scenting the woodland with heady jasmine and musk.

In autumn
love is cautious.
It walks with its head bowed low,
lacking direction.
It wilts with wool-gathering and woe,
kicking the leaf-piles into forlorn puddles.

By winter,
love is overcast.
It stumbles in the fog,
seeking its way out of the woods.
It sags from heavy downpours,
then pulls off its old raincoat and heads for the hills.

People pass my winter window as the season melts from crimson to ice white.

Their faces, some with a rosy glow, others with clenched teeth amid festive anxiety, speak to me of hope and strain as snowflakes fall and a lost dog howls through the valley.

Squirrels scamper home and frozen rain sheets glisten. I wear a thick coat and Copernicus slips his head through his collar as we step out. The birds, so full of chatter, chirp from tree canopies and that lost dog flits to the thicket and back to the afternoon light.

It fades, the sun, and evening comes down before the day is ready. We call the hound to join us. Copernicus and the stray play with gleeful bounds and twists among the tall grass. Rabbits flee and pheasants cower. …