Winter Journal: Hunger Moon

The deer come at dusk, ghosting across the winter-dead lawn. They paw through brittle grass, seeking tender shoots of clover that won’t emerge for weeks. Their ribs press against dulled coats. 

The late winter moon rises huge and cold – the killing moon, the hunger moon, the moon of bones. Its cold light illuminates the lean days when winter’s storehouse runs empty. The forest has been stripped of every berry, every tender shoot, every scrap of food. Even the highest branches have been cleared of their buds by desperate deer rising on hind legs like strange dancers. All that remains is hunger, sharp as the wind.

Above the herbivores, dark shapes wheel in anticipation of the carrion harvest. Crows trace circles in the pale sky, their harsh voices carrying winter’s truth. Red-tailed hawks perch in bare trees, yellow eyes fixed on the ground below. Turkey vultures tilt on thermal currents, patient as hunger itself. Along the valley’s edge, coyotes wait in brown thickets. A red fox, lean as a shadow, watches from the tree line.

By the stream this morning, I found a fresh deer bone, gnawed clean and discarded on the frozen ground. A few patches of brown hair clung to bloodless skin, and the tiny hoof remained – black as a wet stone.  

Don’t look away.

This beautiful, fleeting world depends equally on the blooming flower and the bleaching bone. Spring’s green promise and winter’s white truth burn with the same light.