[Trilby]

We've gone so long without Winter's bane...so few snows of note. Tonight, we see the second of two record snowfalls upon us, and it is...remarkable.

Standing outside at 3 AM, the silence is absolute...no noises from the nearby highway, no birdsong, no human cacophony. There is only the determined hush of the snowfall, and the wind in the trees. As I stand and look over our driveway, I see the Honda being slowly, deliberately buried, and the tall fronds of the bushes next to it seeming to reach out to it, as though they were pleading for support, hoping in a plantlike way to find relief from the accumulating burden. They revolve slowly in the variable air, moving in a random, yet purposeful, motion, bearing the weight of the snowfall, yearning for relief.

I find myself wishing that I were a furry beast, hunkered down amidst the white accumulation. I wonder how it would feel to be in a tent above a treeline in some mountain wasteland, hearing nothing but the slow shush of the multitude of flakes as I drift off to sleep. The air is wet, cold, heavy, and sensual, and it calls us to our slumber. I am given the vision of the embrace of the Mother in Her chilled and hunkering grief, a last gasp of effort before She yields to the certainty of the coming Spring. It is the sense of death, a clothing of chill waters, a trial for all that seek to survive her inconsolably cold embrace.

Back inside the house, I hear the moan of the winds through the window frames, an auditory relic of the anguish of Demeter's longing for her daughter's return from the Underworld. Her pain is cast upon us, and we feel her emptiness one last time before Persephone once again rises to embrace her mother, and in so doing, frees us from the void.

The wind howls still, the snow falls, and we are blessed to know that this, too, shall pass.