In the still and cold of winter sleep (the dark season’s shadow of my soul) a light begins an incremental sweet return. At first, it is as such, a small familiar thing, but salient, in contrast to a blackish, mirky hole. Into my grief, it does intrude. And teases with those promises laden with forgotten warmth. Oh how they do press me with painful weight—the heaviness of memory and loss. Darkness had, you know, become my way at any cost. Oh, to be again summoned into the light, to claw, to wrench and turn, to struggle as the buried seed. Must I too, like earth… labor eternal birth, and decide on life once more again? Ah, to be redeemed in sun and spring and to be freed!