Went walking early yesterday alongside the lake in Divonne. It was completely frozen,  a barren landscape.  The bare trees were stripped down to their essentials, the ground hard. The ducks and swans were walking on the surface of the lake, white in the cold morning air. One wonders what they eat, if they will survive this cold, if the natural cycles are too hard for them. For us too, there are natural cycles, natural learning. Sometimes it may feel like a struggle to just survive. At other times it seems that we are in different phases of growth, such as when we arrive at the end of a year.  One thing we do at this time is look back and see what will grow into next year and what to let go of.

Every year
everything I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation, whose meaning
none of us will ever know.

To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go

Mary Oliver