Christmas Green

Just now the earth recalls His stunning visitation.  Now
the earth and scattered habitants attend to what is possible: that He
of a morning entered this, our meagered circumstance, and so
relit the fuse igniting life in them, igniting life in all the dim
surround.  And look, the earth adopts a kindly affect.  Look,
we almost see our long estrangement from it overcome.
The air is scented with the prayer of pines, the earth is softened
for our brief embrace, the fuse continues bearing to all elements
a curative despite the grave, and here within our winter this,
the rising pulse, bears still the promise of our quickening.

– Scott Cairns in Compass of Affection: Poems New and Selected

This photograph was taken by Jim Peaco of the National Park Service 10 years after the 1988 Yellowstone fires  Lodgepole pine forests reestablish themselves amongst standing dead trees.