The moon arrives each afternoon

no sooner than it left, it seems…

The hours of weakened sunlight zoom by

as if being chased by

some great winter beast.

The rays hide to the south,

lurking behind storms and clouds…

All the earth

begins to still and slide into rest,

trees quietly shedding as

the air thickens with the coming

of dark

and cold.

Life is telling us to slow…

to put aside busyness and

curl up by the fire with a dog.

Like the trees, storing up energy for spring,

our bodies cannot fight

the natural order of things.

We are merely a dash

on the Great Timeline of the earth’s rotation –

decades

and millinnea

and eons of nature’s demand,

for she knows best.

And so we rest.