"Come away with me, it's Eventide and the air is crisp but the heart is warm."
-KCDS
As my loves slumber in afternoon respite, Eventide beckons me outdoors.
Pausing just before the garden gate, delightedly I crouch closer to our first snowdrops blooming. Like promises of Winterspaast, a fragrant messenger that Spring will come no matter how long the winter.
I head for the Arboretum across the way. Buttoning up, but enjoying the chill, I think of Nature's winter dress. Bare and dormant but very much alive...evident by the pregnant limbs just beginning to plump buds still months off from blooms. Even the fuschia trail I spy leads me only to silk petals discarded from a faux bouquet. But the Winterberry bushes burn crimson!
Tree skeletons rise against the coloring sky, wonderfully gnarled and twisted...just awhile ago, Timothy and I played hide-n-seek among the jewel laden branches. Crispy leaves still crunch beneath my feet, though leaves have turned shades of hazel.
A whisper of a breeze rustles branches just lightly causing a whispering rustle...a "whuspering."
Regal lions, oblivious to their chains, stand sentry near orange-splotched marble pillars that once mimicked the majestic amber sweet gum, newly chopped down. Only a tombstone of a stump remains along with its scent mingling with cedar and sleeping hardwoods.
The rusts and gray blues and greens must have inspired local brick buildings and slate roofs. Even our chimneys sport patinaed copper of the same hues.
The merpeople guard a sleeping fountain and urns seem more detailed with herons and nymphs in their empty state. Looking up, the gazebo frames a sky vibrant with moody clouds and more skeleton branches. And there is the moon, just a sliver of a smile that follows me throughout my walk as if to say "I'll see you soon, when the sun has gone to sleep."
And so, I turn home, where my family awaits. Leaf stains lead me home like dinosaur tracks on the sidewalk. Christmas lights have awakened, as we hold onto Christmastide a little longer. My favorite windchime rests in the winterdressed crape myrtle.
I sigh. I am refreshed. I have been to church and seen God's glory...in the chapel of His sunset, stainglassing the windows amid steeples of evergreens while the breeze and birds sang hymns.
