Bringing you home is a promise.

To remember the long shadows on the hills,

the drifts of snow like risen tides, hushed and frozen in time. 

To see once again

winter’s painting scepter

brushing in and out of 

and between the trees

knee-deep to ankle-deep, to moss and ferns,

to fungi and worms.

It is to remember the quieted day,

but for the zephyr through the lofty and lank, the august and the abject.

All the same to me, 

flawless and free.

How we introduced ourselves

with a flush that consumed our faces

even as the sun moved beyond. 

Even as the sun moved beyond, 

and the saw performed your easy severance from the forest floor,

and the earth sealed her terpenes and resin back into her childing arms.

This is a contract we keep:

one that a person makes with a tree

when he or she lovingly lifts it towards the sky 

and away from its temporal home 

just in time for Christmas.