Wild Thoughts…on what stirs within

Beneath ice, water stirs.
Rivers still run.
Lakes sway gently,
as fish gather
in warm water pockets;
and beaver, otter, and weasels
nestle in their dens
moving about under their frozen ceiling.

Frogs and turtles burrow down
slumbering through cold months
in the mud and darkness of
ice-covered lakes and wetlands.

All this and so more continues underneath.
From our vantage point,
it’s easy to forget the liquid life
that stirs beneath inches of ice.

Just as it’s easy to forget at times
the vibrancy of our own inner lives.
The landscape of our interior
that thrums along un-touched by outer influence.

Perhaps it’s especially easy to slip our minds
if our assumptions
lean toward singular thinking
or only trusting what we see.

At times like this
we are called to pause.
To look closely at the ice
that hints of immobility
and recall the fullness within.

For me, that means stopping.
Not for days on end,
but in moments when I notice.
Stopping, breathing, seeing again
the beauty that is everywhere.
Like the lavender gold sunrise this very morning
that startled me out of my insular trudging
and brought me back, just like that,
to spirit, to timelessness,
and to that place beneath my own layer of ice
that sings back to me
the connection I crave.