Deep Winter Reflection

Quiet bearer of the in-between,

you arrive when winter has settled in,

when endurance has replaced cheer,

and the land has learned to hold itself still.

You do not come with green shoots,

or promises spoken too soon.

You come with pressure beneath the surface,

with the knowledge

that beginnings do not announce themselves.

You move through frozen ground,

through roots that have not forgotten

how to reach.

You work where no one is looking,

where patience is the only proof.

This is your teaching:

that tending matters

even when nothing answers back.

That preparation is not absence,

but devotion practiced in the dark.

You ask us to pause at what remains.

To look at what survived

not out of beauty,

but out of necessity.

To choose, carefully,

what will be carried forward,

and what may finally be laid down.

You offer a flame,

small and deliberate.

Not to banish night,

but to sit with it.

To remember that warmth begins as intention,

long before it becomes heat.

Imbolc,

you do not promise spring.

You promise readiness.

You remind us that life begins again

not with certainty,

but with care.