Arctic aven

In this hut named Walden’s I read Psalms out loud, to the dark.

It’s early November and the windows are showing streaks of cold.

Through the smudged glass is the night’s outline of a spruce tree, and beyond, a blackout of tangled bush.

In two hours the dawn will arrive to remove a cuticle moon and some scattered stars.

I sit bundled in layers of clothes, in front of an electric heater, on an old couch, and pray that I never take this beauty for granted; pray that the beauty I see will find a home within, toward which I will rise and repeatedly respond.

For my gratitude is the ragged kind, my words, forgetful. But this—until there’s a newer day—is still what I bring to offer the penetrating silence.

And as the closing season creeps in and I increasingly feel like an Arctic aven; I pray that while I breath I would yet bloom—under the snow if need be.