The Lazy Winter Sky

There's something about the lazy gait of a winter sky scape. The way the horizon creeps up to meet your gaze, gradually revealing its phases. It does so wantonly like an old prostitute disrobing for the evening. It's tawdry and spare yet there's a spectacular beauty as the day lolls from start to conclusion.

I notice in the morning that the sky seems emotionless...almost as dead as the sparse trees that splay their withering limbs. Yet behind it are undulating passages from the wind and the promise of warming shafts of light from the sun. It evolves slowly. The sun appears in the horizon--a pedantic and simmering orb. So different from the effusive blast of the summer sun or the fanciful showiness of the springtime sun--the winter sun hangs low and heavy in the sky, mindful of its heady duty to rise. It lumbers above the horizon, strong...purposeful. The clouds are reedy, sparse--like the solid descriptions you'd find of spinsters in Jane Austen novels.

The sun soon rises to its scheduled plateau. It dons its showiest coat come 9 o'clock. Soon the ice and snow that blanket the ground are gleaming pristine in their icy dressage. The sky adopts a magnificent azure hue and it shows off its shiny pride. Reserved cloud patterns dot the horizon. While I know it's 20 degrees outside, from my vantage point it's a visual paradise.

I watch as the sun migrates the hours, moving overhead much like the Victorian face in an ancestral grandfather clock. The light grows fainter come 4 o'clock and soon after, the sky contorts.

Winter is a tempestuous mistress. She encourages contortions of emotion and distress. The day, so hard won, must migrate into a deep night and the conclusion must be violent and explosive. I have seen some expressions played out in the sky that have caused me pause and awe. Only a winter sky has this power. It churns the labor of shining bright and it spits out a last hurrah. It seems to say, "I have made this mighty effort for you." You must merely rejoice in its culmination.

Then comes the night which descends hard and fast. It takes the mantle of a dark blanket and it assumes the penance of a bleak retribution. There's the shadow of guilt at its magnificence. A winter night offers crisp air and stoic indifference. The moon, its only vanity. And here only because it shines.

It's a curious world. How odd to be such a small force in it.