Winter's Field

In winter’s barren, snowy field I stand,
My tender heart gripped tightly in his icy hand.
His frosty breath across my naked soul doth blow,
Leaving in its numbing wake a frosted, ruddy glow.

I didn’t mean to stand in winter’s field so bare.
When first I stood it blossomed green and lovely there.
But then, alas, the changing leaves did fall,
And that which I had first observed appeared to be nowhere at all.

So here I stand, in nature’s stone-cold lonely place,
The light of love gone briefly from my care-worn face.
Instead a dormant season now resides ~
Within my chilled heart love’s smouldering fire hides.

But winter’s frosted season too must end,
As spring her warming greeting soon will send.
And so my frozen sojourn too will cease,
And once again love’s warmth in me increase.

Copyright Dorothy McDonall

Commentary

Some years ago I entered a long, cold winter season in my life.

The frost began to descend after the sudden death of my grandmother in 1994. I was 30-something at the time and a very disconnected individual. I thought my life was going places with a good job in public relations. I was a soprano in the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, and was in what I thought to be a stable and revitalized marriage. It was a tidy and controlled life, or so I thought. But I was so wrong.

My life was a lie.

Granny's death was a wake up call that triggered an extended period of introspective hibernation. Indeed, it's been 16 years since I entered winter's field and felt the glacial winds of change hurtle me from the cold hands of unconscious living to the warm embrace of self-awareness.

In the ensuing years my claustrophobic marriage ended; I re-kindled my passion for horses; I worked to release my inner artist and took up the call to express my thoughts through the written word.

It's been a tumultuous journey at times, of course, because that is the very nature of the adventure of true self-learning. But that is what's made it all the more rewarding. As spring finally starts to unfold for me after all these years, I am able to grasp the essence of what it really means to be me. The frozen sojourn is ending and the fire of my creativity, and the love it expresses, is finally, and genuinely, beginning to reveal itself.

Welcome to my spring!