The Promise Beneath Winter Poem by Mystic Qalandar

The branches,
stripped of their green garments,
stand naked in the cold air.
Yet they are not dead.

They remain upright,
breathing the slow breath of hidden seasons,
sustained by the thinnest filament of life.
Their roots descend
into the dark intelligence of earth,
where warmth survives
beneath the language of frost.

Life withdraws, but does not depart.
This certainty lives within my heart:
life continues.

The withered leaves beneath my feet,
the vanished grass—
these are only former selves
fallen from the tree of becoming.
Sleeping insects, dead butterflies,
their eggs sealed in silence,
await an appointed hour.

What appears finished is merely concealed.
Even names perish before the life
they tried to hold.
The husks remain.
The essence journeys on.

So the wind scatters the ashes
of my skin and creates me anew.
The promise fulfills itself—
not once, but endlessly.

Nature is patient with its revelations.
It stores its treasures
in hollows of wood,
in seeds,
in forgotten chambers of the soul—
beyond possession, beyond inquiry.

Elusive as a vanished snowman
whose water still inhabits the earth,
it watches from behind the trunks.

Whenever I turn toward it,
it withdraws.
Whenever I cease pursuing,
it draws near.
Its presence remains—
ambient, unlocalized,
without boundary or form.

A fragrance without a flower.
A footprint without a traveler.
A song whose singer is unseen.
Yet everything sings of it.

I follow the trace of its absence,
which is another form of presence.

I enter the winter forest of bare trees,
where silence flowers
upon invisible branches.

There I discover:
the one who sought,
the one who waits,
and the path between them—
one breathing.

The root beneath the earth,
the sap within the tree,
the wind among the branches—
one movement.
One life.
One unfolding.

And through the veils of season—
through death, concealment, and return—
silence flowers upon invisible branches.

—MyKoul