Winter is always the time of sadness and longing.

The longing is indiscriminate-it is an urge to go to a place, but the place is undefined. The sun is very weak during the day, the light futile. There is nothing about it that I want. The night is bitter, and it is very alone. The cold is majestic, and creates a concrete loneliness that is somehow desirable. It is a time to be alone, and listen to the cold form in the air. The branches and the leaves die, because it is the right thing for them to do, and so we are not so sad.

We are all standing together, but we are not together, because it is wintertime. Our angels have deserted us-they, too, wish to be alone.

Statues are warm-they comfort, in their silence. The spoor of the world turns them black and brown and the trails of rust weep down their shoulders. They are alive, in their dying.

The source of light is deep and far away and the stars dim and fade.

We stand, waist deep in the cold, listening for something. We can hear the longing, coming like hope through the splintered trees. But again, the longing refuses to take us anywhere.

It is wintertime. And we will be sad when it goes, and we grow into the joys of bright, hot summer.