A winter’s rapture
White crystals piercing the envelope
Of the sheltering sky
Soft, slow falling down
Out of the cool receiving airs…
Sacred nocturne, a gentle windfall:
All the pristine light of a still winter’s night
Stars fallen, reflected on snowy harvest field and bough
Streetlight images dancing in rainbow glow,
Blue and lavendar haze skies,
over a dark pine forest, over moonlight…
The cool mists of a winter’s day
Veiled branch and bough
everywhere down bent, pure weight
snow fall held close
Oh! sacred winter, season of stories:
Wedding of the earth to the stars
Let us remember you well
When again the spring
will be upon us,
the winter rest over
and life now dormant will awaken;
The eternal cycle renewed
and all our love, all the living world…
Life renewed out of a purest silence:
Holy season of solitude, season of dreams.
–Bev Gorbet, November, 2020
Bev Gorbet is a Toronto poet and retired school teacher. She has published several poems with the Retired Teachers Organization and most recently in “Literary Connection IV: Then and Now” (In Our Words Inc., 2019), edited by Cheryl Antao Xavier.
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press(Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
The Meaning of Water 