The Longest Month

When I taught (I know, I know. I should be wary of using that term, lest a dozen former students PM me, frantically typing up myriad examples of all the times I did not, in fact, teach), anyway. . . . When I taught, I always considered February--stunted though it may be on the pages of my Sierra Club weekly calendar--to be the longest month of the year. Void of vacation days, punctuated by the pap of a day Hallmark created to bump up sluggish sales, the sun still too low in the sky to ignite anything but ennui, February offered little in the way of hope.

Now retired, and wrapped in the poly-blend blanket of politics and pandemic, I'd be forgiven for mistaking this January for any February. And we just now got to double digits, for crying out loud.

Thank goodness I found this swamp-oak leaf the other morning, resting on the pavement at Woods Park, so neatly outlined in the remnants of an overnight fog. That tiny discovery jolted me. First, I thought, what is something with the word "swamp" doing in Nebraska? And, as someone who has always struggled to use scissors deftly, or to outline decently, I wondered how on earth the fog fell so perfectly along the leaf's edges. What was it about those edges that called to the rimy crystals to alight on them?

Later in the walk, my eyes follow the footprints of a fox--propelled by hunger or curiosity or horniness--and I admire the curved line of its path as it bent towards the northwest corner, where backyards abut the pines.

How is it we spend these short winter days doom scrolling, frightened by our worst instincts and fearful of invisible invaders, when, just up the street, brittle leaves sparkle in crystalline finery and the foxes turn their sights toward family?

Even as we wonder how we will see this brutal winter through, the landscape changes and the sun stretches upward, its arms growing longer each day.