The year begins in silence.
Snow covers what was,
and what will be waits beneath,
patient as a seed in frozen earth.
The shortest month, the longest wait. Ice cracks at the edges of ponds. Somewhere, unseen, a thaw begins.
Green returns not all at once but in whispers. A blade of grass. A bud on a bare branch. The world remembers how to grow.
Rain washes the last of winter away. The soil softens. The days lengthen. Everything that was dormant stirs.
Cherry blossoms arrive without warning, like a letter from an old friend. Their petals carry messages the wind translates.
April is the gentlest revolution -- the whole world changing color while pretending nothing has happened at all.
Everything that was promised in March is delivered in May. The canopy closes. The world is green.
The longest day. Light saturates everything. The trees are full, the air is warm, and the world hums with the energy of things in full bloom.
Summer asks nothing of you except to be present. To sit in the shade, to feel the heat, to watch the fireflies at dusk.
Heat shimmers above the fields. The cicadas sing their one relentless note. Time moves slower here, thick as honey.
Tall grass bends in waves the wind writes and erases. The world is so full it seems to overflow.
The last full breath of summer. Sunflowers turn their faces to follow the light, faithful to the end.
The harvest moon hangs low and amber. What was planted in spring is gathered now. The air carries the scent of apples and woodsmoke.
Leaves turn because they must. The green retreats to make room for gold and crimson. There is beauty in letting go.
Forests blaze in farewell. Each tree a torch that burns in gold and scarlet, spending its last warmth before the cold.
The trees are nearly bare now. Their shapes, hidden all year, are revealed: beautiful skeletons of branches reaching for a pewter sky.
November is the quiet after the spectacle. The world draws inward, preparing for its long rest.
The year closes as it began: in stillness. Snow falls again. The cycle is complete, and already the next is beginning.
annual.quest