The Old Year is Dying

The old year is dying. The body of Mother Earth is losing heat. Her joints of rivers and streams are freezing.

Monday she rallied, perhaps because some of her children were coming to visit her. She felt as young as springtime. Around here, temperatures soared to 48 degrees. Yes, of course, she still looked brown with a gray pallor sky overhead, but her youthful energy returned for about 24 hours as she remembered how she used to be.

Now she's lost that energy and recedes into the dementia of winter as some animals go into hibernation.

We, her Earth children, grieve the aging and sickness and the too-soon death of this year, this 2010, which we will never, in our entire lives, see again. We have fond memories, but this year, this garden is gone. Gone. Really gone.