THE DEEP HOLD
Winter MMXXV
I want to watch the blue mist of the night come on,
The windows and the stars illumined, one by one,
The rivers of dark smoke pour upward lazily,
And the moon rise and turn them silver. I shall see
The springs, the summers, and the autumns slowly pass;
And when old Winter puts his blank face to the glass,
I shall close all my shutters, pull the curtains tight,
And build me stately palaces by candlelight.
Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleur Du Mal
Winter is a season of contraction — the land drawing inward, the sap returning to the root. In the northern world, we inhabit this turning almost unconsciously: our movements slow, our attention narrows, and time itself seems to thicken. The light diminishes, the air sharpens, and the visible world retreats beneath a veil of frost and cloud.
Yet within this withdrawal lies a necessary stillness. To winter is not simply to endure; it is to participate in a quiet form of renewal. The soil rests so that it may bear again. The self, too, finds shape in silence. This is the season that asks us to attend — to the faint lines of the horizon, to the weight of breath in the cold, to the spaces between activity where thought begins to deepen.
Winter holds us in its restraint, teaching that rest is not the opposite of growth, but its precondition.
Winter holds its silence like a promise —
that all endings are merely forms of return.
