Welcoming 2022 With Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Happy New Year!

I love beginnings, a fresh start, a new adventure and promises of open roads and opportunities. Energy, anticipation, and hope are all wrapped up in “firsts.” Oh, the rush of adrenaline as we race into the future.

I am thankful that we begin each new year in the winter season. I seek the winter walks where I meet with silence in the soft snow. As Henry Wadsworth Longfellow penned many years ago, “Out of the bosom of the Air, Out of the cloud-fold of her garments shaken….:

January is my time for reflection, of preparation for all that will come when the earth awakens with spring rains.

Snowflakes by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Out of the bosom of the Air, 
      Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken, 
Over the woodlands brown and bare, 
      Over the harvest-fields forsaken, 
            Silent, and soft, and slow 
            Descends the snow. 

Even as our cloudy fancies take 
      Suddenly shape in some divine expression, 
Even as the troubled heart doth make 
      In the white countenance confession, 
            The troubled sky reveals 
            The grief it feels. 

This is the poem of the air, 
      Slowly in silent syllables recorded; 
This is the secret of despair, 
      Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded, 
            Now whispered and revealed 
            To wood and field.