Winterlove

On this bitter cold morning we wake, expecting the heavy frost yet no less delighted, no less surprised.
Coffee and coats and boots are employed for warmth.
We venture outside, we pour up and down the garden, exclaiming each treasure found-
Spider webs are made of barbed crystals!
The sky above is cornflower blue, the greenery bold as summer but ice edged, bejewelled. The horizon lost in mist. Only here exists.
Mr and me, like two oversized children, our fingers stabbed with cold, are easing ice shapes out of containers; we are stacking the shapes into ice sculptures, making oosh noises of hurt, and ahh noises of joy: it’s beautiful! It’s alien! My poor fingers!
Because ice melts, we seize the moment.
See how impermanence is pain and wonder? See how it drives us into discovery?
See how impermanence is the extraordinary in the ordinary?
Every day there is something that you will never see again - it’s that, or never hold it in your sight at all.
Every day there is something that you will never see again - but if you have opened your heart to it, it never leaves you.