Zero

It’s zero degrees out this morning. Zero. As if there was no temperature outside, and no life. There are no animals or birds or wind. Nothing is moving. The air is stiff. I breathe slow, not wanting to disturb the stillness, or the presence of thought and heart that is forming.

The heavy snow from two days ago blankets the woods behind the house with silence. No birds are at the feeder of sunflower seeds. No deer have broken the snow to follow the creek’s path up to paw the snow looking for something green to eat. No owls meditate on the black branches. The abandoned nests of squirrels are mounded over with snow. Are squirrels underneath?

This zero is a door between death and living. A synapse. Which way will this day turn? Some things will die today. What will be born?

Hidden deep in the unmoving trees are impulses of leaves waiting for spring. Beneath the snow, the mice, voles, and woodchuck sleep. The frozen dawn rises pink and yellow on the horizon, slowly warming the air from nothing to eight degrees. Crows slide silently across the sky, their black wings gliding on the frost-crystallized air. A cardinal comes to the feeder, his brilliant red feathers bright against the white background. Another cardinal. Then their brown mates. One jumps into the snow to retrieve a seed and, for a moment, is buried to its neck. Wrens show up to share the feeder. Then chickadees, and a Downey woodpecker. The chirping of birds brings sounds to forests brittle with life.