Perfect Timing

Curling the string of lights, weaving it through your hair with frost and pine needle pins, you wait. Below, the world sits frozen. Crystal clouds steal silence from their pockets and sprinkle it in snow. Still you sleep above it all, gaining your strength for that perfect moment. Sap and moss and pine cones gone to sweet, calling every hungry squirrel, soon to be discarded, pale brown bark, to weight the earth's skin to decompose. When the expanse goes still and white, clouds having emptied and retreated to the land of ice to refill their bellies, you crack open cooling stars, blowing on the embers, to weave into strands of darkness. It's with these nimble fingers that you braid the night. And at that perfect moment, after the snows, after the quiet hush, you give us a star banquet and we are ready... Mouths open, necks crooked, scarves tied in bundles of cashmere and wool, we venture out into the world of clinking icicles and crunching steps to breathe our frosty breath and sigh. Stars sharpen every view through boughs of hardy pines in green and amber sap. The world glows white with snow, and you pin prick the night crystal above. You outdo yourself yet again, and we back away in awe, bowing to your perfect timing and ultimate grace, in a retreat mimicking the empty clouds, to leave you in your glory.