February 28, 2019 - The Bones of Winter

The white trunks and branches of the birch trees reach up into the blue winter sky.  Like all trees, they are the bones of the earth.  But unlike the other trees that try to hide this fact, the white birches jut outward like the cold, bleached bones they are, unashamed.  Like macabre skeletons, they dance against the deep blue background.

Earth's skeleton.

I cannot help but think that winter is their favorite season.  In the summer, they are engulfed in greenery like all trees, drowned out by the sheer weight and volume of the green growth of the season.  After the initial greedy gulp of green occurs in the spring, people turn their glances away from the trees, glutted with vegetation.  Fickle humans.  “Give me greens!  Give me flowers!  Give me fruit!”  It never ends.

No one says, “Give me bones!”  Give me skeletons that click and clack back and forth in the wind.  Give me life bleached out and dry and brittle.  Give me carcasses and stiff remains and hollow shells.  Give me washed-out corpses and rattling cadavers shimmering against the dark blue sky, lit up like the true “bone-fire” they are by the winter sun.

Remember us, say the bleached birches, when the spring comes.  We are the foundation, the frame, the scaffolding, the support system of the world.  Do not be fooled by the transient green, here today and back in the spirit world tomorrow.  We are the fabric of the world, the shell, the structure, the frame, the scheme, the essence of the planet--clicking in our antique rib cages, dancing in the frozen blue.