Bone White Days

winters fertile ground for inspiration

Caught under the moonlight, January is a bone-white month. Weeks stretch in a way that reminds me of a particularly melancholic Sylvia Plath poem - The Moon and the Yew Tree.

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.

Her words capture a shared sense of otherworldliness and isolation found in winter. Pewter grey skies. Soil crunching underfoot. Trees stretch their hands towards the sky, like witches casting spells into the night.

The cold morning winds a somewhat brutal embrace when searching for snowdrops - their delicate white flowers a beacon, a soft prayer towards spring.

Despite my good intentions to embrace this quiet, seasonal way of living, I am not naturally drawn to winter. The harshness of it often outweighs its comforts, and my mind finds hard edges to lean on.

Yet this time is when I find myself most inspired to write and to make. Winter’s death cycle creates fertile ground for my ideas.

Maybe it’s the haunting of su…