winter

I was washing outside in the darkness,the sky burning with rough stars,and the starlight, salt on an axe-blade.The cold overflows the barrel.The gate's locked,the land's grim as its conscience.I don't think they'll find the new weaving,finer than truth, anywhere.Star-salt is melting in the barrel,icy water is blackening,death's growing purer, misfortune saltier,the earth's moving nearer to truth and to dread.

It is deep January. The sky is hard.The stalks are firmly rooted in ice.It is in this solitude, a syllable,Out of these gawky flitterings,Intones its single emptiness,The savagest hollow of winter-sound.

Standing by the frozen glass, he stared down at the icy, barely lit streets running towards the river Seine, the bell-clanging local church, then to the sky like black lead. ("Israbel")

Dream of the Tundra SwanDusk felland the cold came creeping,cam prickling into our hearts.As we tucked beaksinto feathers and settled for sleep,our wings knew.That night, we dreamed the journey:ice-blue sky and the yodel of flight,the sun's pale wafer,the crisp drink of clouds.We dreamed ourselves so far aloftthat the earth curved beneath usand nothing sang but a whistling vee of light.When we woke, we were covered with snow.We rose in a billow of white.

...as the slow sea sucked at the shore and then withdrew, leaving the strip of seaweed bare and the shingle churned, the sea birds raced and ran upon the beaches. Then that same impulse to flight seized upon them too. Crying, whistling, calling, they skimmed the placid sea and left the shore. Make haste, make speed, hurry and begone; yet where, and to what purpose? The restless urge of autumn, unsatisfying, sad, had put a spell upon them and they must flock, and wheel, and cry; they must spill themselves of motion before winter came.

By December an elastic skin of ice reached out hundreds of miles into the sea, rolling with every wave.

This is Winter," said Scarlet. "Princess Winter."Thorne guffawed and pushed a hand into his hair. "Are we running a boardinghouse for misplaced royalty around here, or what?

The tall blue spruce trees surrounding the church stood like ancient prophets in white gowns and a peregrine falcon that had taken up residence in the belfry perched on a ledge keeping an eye out for wandering mice.

My stepmother is not only powerful because the people fear her, she is powerful because she can make them love her when she needs them to. We think that if we choose to do only good, then we are only good. We can make people happy. We can offer tranquility or contentment or love, and that must be good. We do not see the falsehood becoming its own brand of cruelty.__he ship trembled and their speed increased. Luna blurred beneath them.__nce,_ Winter continued, pushing the words out of her lungs. __nce I believed with all my heart that I was doing good. But I was wrong.

No, I don't miss you... Not in a way that one is missed.But I think of you. Sometimes.In the way that one might think of the summer sunshineOn a winter night...

Snake's LullabyBrother, sister, flick your tongueand taste the flakes of autumn sun.Use these last few hours of goldto travel, travel toward the cold.Before your coils grow stiff and dull,your heartbeat slows to winter's lull,seek the sink of sheltered stonesthat safely cradle sleeping bones.Brother, sister, find the waysback to the deep and tranquil bays,and 'round each other twist and foldto weave a heavy cloak of cold.

Winter is not a season, it's a celebration.

In the spring and summer I watched my plants flower, but it was, perhaps, in winter that I loved them best, when their skeletons were exposed. Then I felt they had more to say to me, were not simply dressing themselves for the crowds. Stripped of their leaves, their identities showed forth stark, essential.

Got nothing to say now, huh? Figures." She snorted. Hearing voices was one thing, but talking back to them probably hiked her up to a whole new level of psychosis. Awesome.

Now is the time of fresh startsThis is the season that makes everything new.There is a longstanding rumor that Spring is the timeof renewal, but that's only if you ignore the depressingclutter and din of the season. All that floweringand budding and birthing--- the messy youthfulnessof Spring actually verges on squalor. Spring is too busy,too full of itself, too much like a 20-year-old to be the best time for reflection, re-grouping, and starting fresh. For that you need December. You need to have lived through the mindless biological imperatives of your life (to bud, and flower, and show off) before you can see that a landscape of new fallen snow is THE REAL YOU.December has the clarity, the simplicity, and the silence you need for the best FRESH START of your life.

I__ thought there__ be no winter in the desert, but winter arrived anyway__ilently, suddenly.

He came back to the car, long legs lifting high in the snow, and there was snow in his hair and on his eyelashes and I remembered that I love him. It felt like something breaking with a little pain and spilling warm.

WINTER SPOILER KINDACinder stared at his whitened knuckles and struggled for something meaningful to say. Her grand plan of revolution and change had just begun and already she felt like a failure. This seemed worse than failing the people of Luna, though. She'd failed the people she cared about most in the universe.Finally, she whispered, "I'm so sorry, Thorne.""Yeah," he said. "Me too.