Signs of Winter

This morning as I step out of the barn, done with chores, the sun is still hiding and the deep indigo sky stretches out before me from one horizon to the next. That backdrop gives the stars, still bright and dancing, a stage for their performance not yet finished. I lift my chin to see the constellations stuck to the dome of blue, like window clings wrapped to curve of the atmosphere.

The grass gives way with each step I take toward the house, crunching beneath my feet, dressed in a thin veil of ice.  As the light from the house reaches out to greet me, the grass suddenly explodes in a brilliant display of flickering, glistening, sparkling lights. Like the glitter I would find left behind, all those years ago, after Abby would dance in her fairy outfit and stop to give me a hug. Those magical sparkles danced now on the grass like a fancy invitation to winter.

As the earth spins and the day length changes it is easy to have it slip by, unnoticed, until suddenly one is waking without the aid of sunshine through the window and retiring to the house by the light of the floods. But I find the change in day length fascinating when you are faced with it daily. A change of merely a minute or five can make a substantial difference.

Nearly thirty minutes has passed, and as I sit with my coffee staring out the window, the blackness, deep and penetrating, stares back at me between the window frames.  It is this view I will have each morning until the earth begins her journey back toward the sun.