The snow is soft in the morning light,
soft in the morning fog.
A line of trees cuts the fields in front of you.
Steam rises off the creek.

You have built a still life,
simple. Peaceful, still moving,
like creek waters under the ice.
Unseen and relentless,

a strange combination
that has become natural to you,
comfortably invisible,
happy in the January light,

happy to wait for the change in seasons,
walking, seeing the signs,
the willows turning yellow, almost green,
new growth in the wood briars, sharp and red,

color in unexpected places.

Unexpected unless you have lived
through many winters,
growing stronger and wiser in each one,
learning finally that time is not king,

Effort,
vision,
love and persistence rule
the secret life of winter.

Many of the tools you wield were your father’s,
and his father’s before him.
Old steel and wood with the patina of age and sweat.
When you palm any of them,
more than work passes through your hands.
Lives lived. Generations of repair, knowledge
passed down with callouses and sweat,
the kind of wisdom that knows no age or era,
slow work, a recognition of the soul of things,
that those same things were not made for impermanence,
nor were the lives that made them.

You own nothing.
The houses and things that surround you,
the people who live in your circumference
are your companions and friends,
Never yours to own. You do your work.
Choose your colors, use your old tools
to help them through their time with you,
and then, they are gone. Someone else’s.
Or someone else. Never you. Never yours.

Your contentment is in the restoration. In the repair.
Without expectation, always surprised.
Doing the best you are able with what you know
and these old tools you carry.
They have served you well.

But it is a new time and there is a temptation to believe
you need new tools.
The temptation is strong. It is powerful, that belief
that time has made the old ones obsolete.
From time to time you have succumbed,
but always you have been proved wrong.
The old tools work just fine. They are slower, true,
and more work is needed, a bit more understanding
of the wood you work, the iron you forge, true,
but these tools were themselves crafted
to create, repair and restore things that last.
There is nothing temporary in them,
and your faithfulness in their use has a strange power,
hand hewn eternity, full of history, and promise both.

The first time I visited, I walked the streets at night,
past closed stores and brightly lit restaurants
with their specials proudly displayed in the street.
The smell of onions, meat and seafood grilling
wafted into the street. Temptation.

I could hear the bay, soft waves and wind.
In one dark corner, a bar, the Grotto.
Faintly, I heard music, raucus Southern rock,
out of place at this end of the world New England spot.
I smiled at the dichotomy. Temptation.

There was a time, long ago,
when bars were my second home,
much as diners and dives are today.
I would sit in the corner, and listen,
and watch people through the smoke.
I don’t think I ever picked up a woman in a bar.
I never got quite drunk. but I loved the atmosphere,
loose and sad and unrestrained, for better or worse,
an alcohol fueled honesty.
As I walked by, someone opens the door to leave
and you can smell the smoke. Temptation.

I made my way through the town. And back again,
giving each temptation a second chance to lure me in.
And why not? Why not surrender?
There is nothing in any of these doorways
that would reduce me to sinner status.
Well, maybe a little gluttony, but momentary, no more.
My soul would survive that.

But I am not here for these things. I am here for peace,
and I turn away from the noise and walk towards the pier.
Most of the fishing boats are gone, at work during the night.
The ones left bob on the waves.
Work lights flood the decks. Ropes are deftly coiled.
I breath in the air, A mix of salt
and the remnants of yesterday’s catch.
In one of the smaller boats an old man mends nets.
He nods. I nod back.

It has been a good trip. Tomorrow I drive home.
There is the one last temptation. To stay.
But I will pass by this one as well.
Living at the end of the world has its charm
but those I love and those that love me
live five hours away. My life is not my own
and I would not want it to be.
As beautiful a temptation solitude can be,
in the end, isolation is the enemy.

You have learned this the hard way,
and dense as you are, you rarely make the same mistake twice,
no matter the temptation.

It snowed again last night, just enough
to cover the ground, not enough
to slow life in any way. You drove right through it,

past the fields and barns, past the forests
with limbs lined with white. Feathers falling.

It is more than a post card. These are working farms.
Cows are being fed and milked.
Steam rises from piles of manure.
Goats too, are milked, Cheese is being made.
Early mornings and late nights. The work continues
no matter the weather.

Here, life is defined by seasons. By weather.
Sun and rain and snow and drought have meaning
beyond the soft contours of the ground,
beyond colors or the lack of colors.

You did not know it, but you needed that reminder,
that return to your summer roots, summers spent
on your grandfather’s farm, feeding pigs
and hoeing peanuts with black men who sang hymns.
My grandfather and I sang along.

In the heat of the day, we would all disperse.
He and I would go to the mill pond deep in the woods
and fish. He used bait. I did not.
It was the being there that mattered.

I spent my lifetime working in cities,
It was a good life and it was part of what has formed me.
but distance and time have a cost. Things get lost.
I had no idea what coming here, to Nowhere, Vermont,
would do to restore my connection to the dirt
that birthed us all.

Slow down.
Press forward.
Throw out a few things.
Stand outside in the storms.
Slow down
Be more aware. Of everything.
Look upward more. Look beyond.
Tell fear
to *******.
Throw away a few more things.

Remember
the value of real things,
the cost of false things.
Pet the cats.
Hold your wife
more.
Let the lost things stay lost.
Find new things.
Dance more.
Listen to more music.

Understand
you are enough.

It is raining. A January rain come early
on the cusp of a new year. Cold,
but not cold enough for snow.
Everything is mud.

It has not been the year you wished for.
So much ground to a stop, to a broken crawl.
A year dedicated to survival and fighting
of new fears. A lost year.

Children have grown up without you seeing them.
Friends have died, alone. The church lies empty.
There have been no journeys,
too few explorations.

Too much of your time this year has been spent in mourning
and you are tired. Plague, Cancer
and the worst cancer of all, isolation,
have left your mind muddled, and yet….

And yet… it has not been a wasted year.
Around you, you have seen a shift. an appreciation
of true value, of each other, of the precious things that matter
and the things that do not.

You have remained in love.
Your faith has grown stronger as your body has grown weaker.
Your demons are more polite. At times, the battles
turn to afternoon tea and crumpets.

“This too shall pass” has become our mantra,
and it is beginning. You can just see it, the light, the hope.
It is a vague thing. Vague as mud. But it is there,
snippets and shots and whispers.

It is as if we have been asleep, in a bad dream,
and we wake to the same dream, foggy and cold.
Vague. Uncertain.
The ground is slippery.

But it is the cusp of the new year.
The days grow longer. There is change in the air,
sweet as lilac in the night. A thing you cannot see
but you know is there.

And you, tired and worn, are piling the wood.
It is time for a bonfire. For warmth.
To become a beacon, calling the lost home,
including yourself.

I have become stronger
in my weakness.

I do not even pretend
to understand.

Some gifts,
you just accept.