Last night’s rain seeps into the thirsty earth, leaving behind only damp memories in December’s pale morning. Each droplet on the bare dogwood twigs holds the entire sky—gray and curved in miniature, trembling in the cold air.
Dawn arrives with a whisper of frost. Crystals form in darkness, painting the earth in delicate white. Where sunlight touches ice on blades of grass, colors scatter—red here, blue there, green and gold winking from the browning lawn—a universe of light trapped in ice, then gone in a breath.
The bare oaks and maples stand against the brightening sky, their branches mapping the space between earth and heaven. No longer the stark silhouettes of night, they warm slowly in the pale light, revealing the subtle grays and browns of wet bark and the precarious geometry of twigs.
From the valley floor rises a voice made bold by rain. The stream runs full; brown water cuts new channels in the muddy banks, churning over stones that stood dry just yesterday. It rushes toward reunion. The Delaware River calls. Delaware Bay beckons. The vast Atlantic waits—patient and eternal.
Water knows no rest, no single form. It rises as mist from deer tracks, gathers as cloud, and falls as blessing or fury. It pools in stillness, then leaps from the highlands. It cradles fish eggs in quiet eddies, bears ships across oceans, and flows through the veins of all living things.
Always moving. Always returning. Always itself—whether ice or mist, cupped in a child’s palm or rolling in ocean swells. Each drop is distinct and part, fleeting and eternal, like breath, thought, and this moment dissolving into the next.