We’re past the holidays and into the new year
according to calendar time.
The view out the window in this part of the northern hemisphere
is varying shades of gray and white, gray-ish white.
Cloud Dancer, some might call it.

Grayscale. Bleak.

Tempting to stay inside, stay neutral,
hide away, waiting the grayness out.

But venture into this season enough and you will see
that underneath is still a world of color.

Deep burgundy sporophytes reaching skyward
from bright carpets of moss.
Orange-and-brown clusters of tiny mushrooms, fruiting up,
forming neighborhoods on a stump.
Cerulean and sage turkey tail polypores
overlapping down the side of a decaying log.
A still-scarlett Black Cherry leaf, somehow protected from the wind,
not yet fallen to the ground.

The color, the life is there,
even when things look grim,
you just have to look beyond the gray
to see it.