“A Reason For The Season”, posted for OneShotPoetryWednesdays

I posted this in the beginning of December and thought it a good sentiment to end the month and the year.

Merry Christmas, or the politically correct form: Happy Holidays, though the Winter Solstice is in there somewhere.

Lady Nyo

A REASON FOR THE SEASON

I saw the Cooper’s hawk this morning. She landed on the chimney pot, probably looking for my miniature hen, Grayson. Four years ago she was a starving fledgling who mantled over while I fed her cold chicken. She’s back this holiday, my spirits lifting. A good Christmas present.

In the middle of the commercialization of Christmas, Nature closes the gap. I have noticed squirrels with pecans in mouths leaping the trees, hawks hunting low over now-bare woods, unknown song birds sitting on fences, heard the migration of Sandhill cranes as they honk in formation. You hear their cacophony well before they appear. Their chiding cries float down to upturned faces.

There is brightness to the holly, washed by our late autumn rains and the orange of the nandina berries has turned crimson. Smell of woodsmoke in the air and the crispness of mornings means the earth is going to sleep. We humans should reclaim our past and our fecal plugs and join the slumber party of our brother bears.

Jingle Bells will fade and our tension with it. Looking towards deep winter when the Earth is again silent will restore our balance and calm nerves with a blanket of peace.

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2008, 2010

“A Reason For The Season”

In the Highlands....

It’s early in the Holiday season, but so many of my friends, neighbors and family are feeling the stress and anxiety of current economic conditions. We are encouraged to go out  into the malls and online to spend money we don’t have.  So many are losing their homes right now, don’t have jobs, face an unknown future.

It’s all around us, and not just in our country.  This is a world wide issue and it will break so many people.  The good  I am seeing is this: some sites and programs of re-gifting, downsizing expectations, returning to a simpler concept of these various religious holidays.  The glut is all over the map, and people  are tired.

I told my dear husband I didn’t want any presents this year, though we have not been hit hard like so many others we know.  I look around and think how to simplify, to un- clutter, how to get to the real issues that my values and spiritual leanings reveal to me.  It’s a question of not listening to the hype, the glut, the maddening rush for what?  More X-boxes?

This short 200 word piece was written two years ago, but I think it holds up well for the current season.

Lady Nyo

A REASON FOR THE SEASON

I saw the Cooper’s hawk this morning. She landed on the chimney pot, probably looking for my miniature hen, Grayson. Four years ago she was a starving fledgling who mantled over while I fed her cold chicken. She’s back this holiday, my spirits lifting. A good Christmas present.

In the middle of the commercialization of Christmas, Nature closes the gap. I have noticed squirrels with pecans in mouths leaping the trees, hawks hunting low over now-bare woods, unknown song birds sitting on fences, heard the migration of Sandhill cranes as they honk in formation. You hear their cacophony well before they appear. Their chiding cries float down to upturned faces, neighbors outside watching in awe at their flight overhead.

There is brightness to the holly, washed by our late autumn rains and the orange of the nandina berries has turned crimson. Smell of woodsmoke in the air and the crispness of mornings means the earth is going to sleep. We humans should reclaim our past and our fecal plugs and join the slumber party of our brother bears.

Jingle Bells will fade and our tension with it. Looking towards deep winter when the Earth is again silent will restore our balance and calm nerves with a blanket of peace.

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2008, 2010

Originally published in “A Seasoning of Lust”, 2009, lulu.com