When the Earth Chooses Its Favorite Month

The Earth, too, has its favorite month—  
though it never says so.  
It speaks instead through rhythms:  
light shifting on hilltops,  
roots pushing through sleep,  
breezes rehearsing songs  
before I know the lyrics of renewal.  

When I listen closely,  
I realize my own heart mimics its pulse.

***

In January, the air wears silver.  
Frost gathers on the edges of everything  
like a signature too shy to complete.  
Mountains hum under weightless mist,  
their peaks half-hidden—half-dream.  

I walk where the river lies still,  
its surface a mirror to the sun’s first thought of rising.  
Branches hold the memory of leaves—  
skeletal, truthful, yet unafraid of emptiness.  

I love how nature pauses here,  
a deep, expectant breath before rebirth.  
Even silence feels alive,  
waiting for thaw.

***

February spills its light carefully,  
as if testing warmth on its palm.  
Grass begins to whisper beneath ice.  
Rivers, once bound, crack into laughter.  

The mornings are gentle conspiracies  
between frost and fire.  
A robin tilts its head,  
declaring spring possible.  

I breathe the faint sweetness of damp soil  
and feel renewal stretch,  
like a dream remembered in fragments.  
There’s something divine  
in not hurrying the bloom.

***

March walks barefoot.  
Its feet bruise the earth awake.  
A thousand tiny greens emerge  
where yesterday there was nothing but sleep.  

Rain arrives without notice—  
brief, honest, sudden as joy.  
The air smells of clay and courage.  

I see the world rebuilding itself:  
petal by petal,  
call by birdcall,  
dawn by trembling dawn.  

March is not gentle—it insists.  
It asks the seeds of fear to sprout anyway.

***

April confides in color.  
The earth opens like a poem mid-sentence,  
each flower a metaphor for becoming.  

Lilacs promise fragrance without permanence.  
Butterflies negotiate the air  
in uncertain spirals of devotion.  

When thunder grumbles,  
the fields bow not in fear but in rhythm.  
Rain paints and repaints the same meadow  
until even forgetting becomes beautiful.  

Every drop feels like a punctuation mark  
in the Earth’s long confession of tenderness.

***

May flings wide the doors of light.  
Everything is green, eager, articulate.  
Bees move like commas in the grammar of life.  
Mountains drop their last threads of snow.  

The sea deepens its laughter,  
tasting salt and wind together.  
Even shadows seem merciful.  

May carries the scent of growth so intense  
it feels like a prayer breaking open.  
I touch bark, and it hums.  
I whisper into grass,  
and something beneath answers softly:  
You are home.

***

June is abundance—  
the world at full exhale.  
The sun lingers,  
a patient storyteller  
refusing to set until every tale is told.  

Fields dance in amber murmurs.  
Cicadas chant at the temple of dusk.  
The river wears gold around its moving shoulders.  

And yet, in every shimmer,  
a warning—the tide of time receding even as it rises.  
Light teaches both generosity and loss.  
What glows today will rest tomorrow.  
Still, June dares to blaze.

***

July thunder smells like wet iron.  
Rain stitches sky to soil.  
Everything softens—  
edges, moods, ambitions.  

The forest floor breathes musk and memory.  
Mango trees exhale sweetness  
so thick it almost sings.  
A peacock opens sky-colored feathers  
as if rephrasing the definition of beauty.  

I sit by the window,  
raindrops counting the minutes.  
The world outside is both funeral and birth.  
Every droplet insists: Begin again.

***

August leans golden against the afternoon.  
The sun, larger now, feels like wisdom—  
not heat, but knowing.  
The grasses turn from green to promise.  

Clouds slow down for contemplation.  
The river’s voice deepens,  
telling stories of mountains long gone.  

There’s ripeness in the air:  
melons split with scent,  
figs soften into wine.  
Even decay feels luminous.  
In August, endings dress like miracles.

***

September folds color back into itself.  
Fields shimmer with harvest sighs.  
Wheat bows to wind like gratitude in motion.  

The mornings carry chill lace on their breath.  
Leaves begin to rust, gently,  
like hearts preparing to forgive the year.  

Migrating birds carve invisible highways  
across the patient sky.  
I stand beneath them,  
feeling both small and necessary.  

September humbles me.  
It knows how to finish softly  
and begin again without fanfare.

***

October—  
the forest cathedral.  
Light filtered through gold and rust.  
I walk among leaves that applaud my every step.  

The air burns sweet with cedar and memory.  
A single apple falls,  
round and ready,  
echoing the wisdom of gravity.  

Mountains wear their melancholy in brilliance.  
Wind speaks through dry reeds about surrender,  
but not sorrow.  

If heaven had a favorite palette,  
it would be October’s muted fire.  
If I had a favorite truth,  
it would be that beauty survives transformation.

***

November drifts in smoke and stillness.  
Morning fog curls around fences like thought.  
Bare branches trace philosophies against the pale.  

Streams slow, contemplative;  
the earth exhales deeply,  
preparing for another quiet.  

I gather warmth the way squirrels gather hope—  
in fragments, in whispers.  
Even decay feels kind.  
Every fallen leaf a letter  
returned to the soil unread but understood.  

November teaches me  
that peace doesn’t need applause.

***

December folds everything into hush.  
Snow, or dew, or dust—depending on place—  
softens all edges equally.  

The stars grow louder here.  
They blink in long, cold sentences  
only the soul interprets right.  

Fires burn inside homes and hearts alike.  
Logs crack like gentle laughter.  
There’s cinnamon in the air, silence at the edges.  

December’s night feels maternal—  
watchful, infinite, warm under all that cold.  
Time kneels quietly at the threshold of another beginning.  
I close my eyes  
and thank the seasons for shaping who I became.  

Because every month I loved  
was really the earth teaching me  
how to belong again  
to its breathing,  
its waiting,  
its quiet promise of turning.