When the Birds Converge Deep in the Thicket 

Maybe it is the fact I'm retired.  Maybe it's just that I love icy cold days with a hard February sun.  Last night we had one of those winter storms that blow through about once every 7 -15 years depending on whether you were in the worst of it or on the edge of it.  I went to bed with with the wind chimes clanging and the rusty windmill throwing blades.  I woke up while it was still dark, drank my coffee, pulled my boots on and slipped out into the darkness.  It was the kind of silence that even a hurried soul couldn't help but notice.  Above, the stars were soo bright.  It was like they were caught in a beam of the purest, most intense white light possible to imagine.  And each star shattering that beam into millions of sparkling shards and sending them back out across eternity.

It is good to be alive, not alive like breathing and eating, but alive as in being fully aware, of being hyper-attentive not through sacrificing to tunnel vision, but being immersed in Panavision.

February 16th 2021, Poppie
  

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