When your eyes see only what the heart feels ~

 

It is the life of the crystal, the architect of the flake,

 the fire of the frost, the soul of the sunbeam. 

This crisp winter air is full of it. 

~John Burroughs, "Winter Sunshine"

The turned-on glow of the table lamp

Encircles me in golden halo

While in tempered darkness the houseplants slumber

while it is pitch black outside.

The wall behind me lets out a moan

As sudden rain hammers with blasts of wind, 

one after another, echoing in my ears

Rattling the panels with creaks and groans

Oh, how I shudder hearing the old thing

as if it's breathing down my neck

I sit in the comfort of the cushioned chair.

but the old wall feels compelled 

to give a continual report of the weather,

as behind my back the drama plays out

Until all I am thinking is this stormy night

Playing around in my head, 

a raddling here, a shuddering there

Until, out of desperation, I begin to write.

As always, not a creature is stirring 

but for a plump gray stripy cat

Wearing white socks and mittens and bib,

And muzzle with a blaze 

softly reaching between his eyes

those lovely green eyes that I am lost in

as they look up at me so endearingly 

causing whispers of sweet nothings in his ear

Until there he goes

remembering he loves his sister too

Into the closet to that cushy cat bed next to hers

for a midnight snooze, and I am alone.

Just me and a wall that won’t be muzzled

as the storm battles on with a fierce determination

to push Christmas on over to the other side of the world.

It's beginning to feel more like fright night

Than an authentic Christmas story.

So be it.

There is a time on Christmas Eve

Between the strike of the first second and the last

Before it becomes Christmas day

If you cannot rid your mind of gifts received

And have nothing to report in gifts given

A Glimmer slides through that slit in time

between hopes fulfilled and desires crushed

to find you in your dreams…

no one ever escapes.

If you wake up,

You may catch a glimpse of its shadow

as it flies towards and through your soul

for it is here to stay, as your hollow friend

Uprooting your regrets one by one

As it opens drawer after drawer

until it finds all your secret hiding places

you thought you had so cleverly created.

Your present begins to be consumed

As your past chokes it from your life,

and If you linger a second too long

Your past will become your present

As time folds back upon itself

if the Glimmer has so desired,

when it takes a disliking of you. 

It will always come to you in your dreams

Until every little regret of value or no value

Consumes you in a deliciously, deliriously 

never-ending nightmare,

Fortunately for you, if the Glimmer has a relapse

And totally forgets its dislike of you

At whatever stage of the game you’re at,

It may find itself tucking all those little regrets

back into the safety of your drawers - 

but remember, this is highly unlikely

as the glimmer takes unkindly to deceptions

of keeping your secrets, your secrets,

So beware, fellow readers, you have been forewarned.

If you are so lucky to be lucky enough

then and only then

on Christmas Eve of the next year to come

Between the strike of the first second and the last

Before it becomes Christmas day

if you think less of gifts that are received,

But more of gifts that are given

You’ll find yourself free

of the Glimmer’s hold from that day forward.

but as usual

it is never a guarantee,

for life has no concept of words so final.

especially when dealing with a Glimmer

Who is turning into a Glummer.

Were we any different? 

I think not, papa; 

for I recollect very well that I used to try

to peep through the key-hole on Christmas Eve, 

and was greatly vexed that my good mother 

always hung a cloth before it. 

~C. C. Shackford "Christmas Eve in Germany,"

It is the blessed Christmas-tide, 

the eve of the holy Christmas Day. 

The snow-flakes are falling softly and silently, 

as do the blessings of the season, on all who greet it 

with hearts pure, loving, and true.... 

It is spreading a winding sheet over the plains, 

loading down the fir-boughs in the forests, 

and lies in heaps upon the thatch of the woodcutter's cottage, 

whitening the monastery, its walls and eaves, 

putting snowy crowns on the castle's ancient towers, 

frosting the cities, incrusting spire and chimney, 

building and town. 

The whole world seems enveloped in the storm 

this Christmas eve. 

~Annie I. Willis, "Welcome to Christmas,"

I can remember what a source of wonder to me Jack Frost and the moon were, and the hours I used to spend before frosted windows, seeing all kinds of fairylands...

Isn't it funny that at Christmas 

something in you gets so lonely for — for — I don't know what for, exactly, but it's something you don't mind so much not having 

at other times. 

~Kate Langley Bosher, How It Happened

I will honour Christmas in my heart, 

and try to keep it all the year. 

~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

There seems a magic in the very name of Christmas. 

~Charles Dickens, "A Christmas Dinner"

Tucked away in my writing room of gentle chaos, I wish to write about my day, but it is a day of nothing.  No matter, I’ll begin and you have permission to take a little snooze if you so choose. 

Do you ever wonder what kind of impression you make on another person’s life?  Are you a beacon of hope on the horizon or are you a fog horn warning don’t go there.  Either way, it could be good or bad.

I once had a young work friend who wanted to go to art school and see if he was good enough to make a living at it.  It was his big dream in life.

He had a wife and a baby and was always hesitating as to if he should wait a little longer until it was more affordable to do.  I just looked at my life and gave him the best advise I could. 

I remember telling him that day would never come, when things would be more affordable.  It never does.  The longer he waited, the more likely it would never happen.

I asked him what happens if he has another child.  That would put it even further out of his reach.  I suggested, if his wife was willing to back him, to just go for it and see what happens.  He was young and resilient, and could always bounce back if needed.

He quit his job a month later and vanished out of my world.  I never knew what choice he made, and for forty years he appears in my thoughts occasionally, when my nights are quiet and reflective. 

Did I send him down that rocky road full of potholes to ruin, did he succeed?  Did he do something else completely?  I will wonder forever.  Sometimes life is so unsatisfying.

When Vietnam happened, the local newspaper published the names and addresses of all the town folk who shipped out, so people could send them letters.  I picked out a name and wrote him a long letter.

At the only high school reunion I ever attended, the 40 year one, I reacquainted myself with him, a person I mostly just said hi to throughout all four years of school.

We keep in touch, occasionally, and he is now a friend.  He wrote to me yesterday and let me know that I was the only one who ever wrote to him when he was in Vietnam, and that has always been very special to him.

That revelation surprised me as it was sixty years in coming, and not knowing sometimes puts you in that place of feeling like you make no difference at all.

It warmed my heart.  Made me wish I had written more than one letter, but we know where a life of wishing takes you, so I’ll be grateful even the one letter was sent, as I was quite an introvert back then.

Life is full of so many unanswered questions that make it mysteriously wonderful in its own way.  If we had all the answers, wonder would be buried in apathy, and that would be so sad. 

Santa Claus would never have been born, and all those stockings would still be used only for feet.  And where would hopes and dreams and all good things be found?  Life’s special, just the way it is.

Sweet Austin

From the Cat and Dog Christmas Tree

I Would Do Anything For You - Even Fly

The Little Guy Who Started It All

Hotdogs and Cherry Pie - Snoopy Style

The Little Pig is Listening

Little Charlotte

Winter

  ~ Walter de la Mare

And the robin flew

Into the air, the air,

The white mist through;

And small and rare

The night-frost fell

Into the calm and misty dell.

And the dusk gathered low,

And the silver moon and stars

On the frozen snow

Drew taper bars,

Kindled winking fires

In the hooded briers.

And the sprawling Bear

Growled deep in the sky;

And Orion's hair

Streamed sparkling by:

But the North sighed low,

"Snow, snow, more snow!"

What crowding thoughts around me wake,

What marvels in a Christmas-cake!

Ah say, what strange enchantment dwells

Enclosed within its odorous cells?

Is there no small magician bound

Encrusted in its snowy round?

For magic surely lurks in this,

A cake that tells of vanished bliss;

A cake that conjures up to view

The early scenes, when life was new;

When memory knew no sorrows past,

And hope believed in joys that last! —

Mysterious cake, whose folds contain

Life’s calendar of bliss and pain;

That speaks of friends for ever fled,

And wakes the tears I love to shed.

Oft shall I breathe her cherished name

From whose fair hand the offering came:

For she recalls the artless smile

Of nymphs that deck my native isle;

Of beauty that we love to trace,

Allied with tender, modest grace;

Of those who, while abroad they roam,

Retain each charm that gladdens home,

And whose dear friendships can impart

A Christmas banquet for the heart!

To Mrs. K_____,

On Her Sending Me an English Christmas Plum-Cake at Paris

By Helen Maria Williams

The Garden

Viburnum Leaf on an Oak Leaf (Upper)

---

Maidenhair Fern (Lower)

Entangled on a Trellis

A whirl of oak leaves caught in the bushes -

Butter Lettuce

Baby plants just keep growing even though the nights are in the 20's F.

Giraffe Spots, Peniophora albobadia 

A decomposer of wood that can be found year-round. 

It is a crust fungus that features a distinctive pattern 

reminiscent of giraffe markings in large groups

Winterberry fruit amid the oak leaves

Worn Out Sentry

Taken through a screened window, so a bit not right.

We are all mortal until the first kiss and the second glass of wine.

~ Eduardo Galeanmo

Most evenings this month plunge into the cold 20’s F. and rarely rise above the forties for the days.  It truly feels bleak in the garden, even when the sun shines through the vegetation that silently disintegrates a little each day as the crisp north winds batter it mercilessly.

Looking for photo opportunities is rather disappointing, as the garden seems too small to put up a grand display.  I’m sure everything in nature loves it, as it was allowed to grow fairly wild and unruly, but it looks quite tired as it fights with the wind and usually loses.

Our neighbor on the corner cut the grand black walnut down and all the oaks in the back last year, but the winds mischievously whip our oak leaves into a blanket on their lawn.  We clean it as far as the lawn rake reaches, but the rest is his, a present from nature laughing at boundaries with no fences.

Looking out my writing room window, my other neighbors yard is front and center with that huge banana tree by the pool with crispy brown curled up leaves that reminds one of a swamp creature rising up out of the depths of the mire.

If I tire of looking there, the back bedroom window is always free for a stare at what is left when winter’s touch freezes it all in place, so wickedly.  It is the best view of all the windows, I always think, but when I photograph it, I am so brutally proven wrong.  There are times the eye sees only what the heart feels.

It is an area full of shrubs, some evergreen, but many not.  A male Persimmon tree and an American Hornbeam, the only trees, populate the far left corner; the only sun space when the great White Ash Tree monopolized the yard.  They are the kings now.

What is left of the Bottlebrush Grass, stands ghostly tall as it sprinkles the landscape with a see through veil, and off to the center right is a red, red cardinal to the front of what can only be a dandelion plant with a defiant golden yellow bloom.  It is a picture of pure delight.

The side yard bedroom window reveals a botched-up paint job on the neighbor’s house side, and if my nose is pressed closely against the glass pane, snippets of my side garden come to life with browned up asters and grasses and Butterflyweed seed pods standing as sentinels into the air.

The front yard has suffered the most from indiscriminate vegetation annihilation.  Weed pulling is not allowed anymore without the boss on site.  That said, it is a bleak and miserable tale of things that have gone bad with a guy that meant well, but didn’t do well.  Lesson learned, he claims.

The trees and bushes are mostly still there, but the perennials and grasses have all disappeared, leaving it indeed a bleak cold wintery site to behold.  To these eyes, there is nothing inviting except that glorious bird feeder in the center, keeping the squirrels and birds happy consuming sunflower chips in this frosty cold.

Back again in my writing room where I hibernate when I want to be alone, all to myself, a meager display of Christmas decorations are on the wall opposite of my sitting position, mostly there to remind me that it is indeed the Christmas holiday season.

That saying by Kate Langley Bosher “Isn't it funny that at Christmas 

something in you gets so lonely for — for — I don't know what for, exactly, but it's something you don't mind so much not having at other times” reminds me of the ghosts of my Christmas childhood that haunt me starting at some point in November and ending December 26.

I always want a Christmas like then, but guess what, it never happens.  What a surprise.  With that said, I sometimes loath the thought of this winter holiday when it rolls around, but soon I am decorating again, remembering that feeling of a family at Christmas.

So here’s to lost Christmas’s and Christmas today.  When your eyes see only what the heart feels, embrace it.  It is the essence of the meaning of this holiday season.    

Warm hugs and best wishes!

Merry Christmas

with love,

Yvonne

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