Winter speaks in fewer colors,
a stripped language
after the eloquence of fall,
before the abundance of spring.

The world is mostly breath and bone,
fields hushed to a single tone,
as if creation has learned
the holiness of restraint.

Yet nothing is empty.

A cardinal burns red
in the wide cold silence,
a living ember
set deliberately against the pale.
Evening gathers fire at the horizon,
snow drinking in its colors
until the sky itself seems to pray.

Listen.
The quiet is not absence
but attention.

Light and shadow lean toward each other,
a sacred balance written in frost and flame.
Here, in the narrowed spectrum,
God does not shout.
He abides.

And in that abiding,
the soul remembers
that even now,
all is well.