I woke with a fire burning against my belly, fuzzy and electric, decidedly shifting it down to my toes.

Arlo licks the tip of my nose awake,  slightly nipping with untrained teeth.

My love snores through the pine in the next room over. I make my way with woolen feet.

Across the field, a neighbor strings a mess of rainbow twinkle bulbs, 

inviting the light, reminding us the light.

Whether blind following of tradition or something more, these are movements our bodies remember, when we sat elbow to elbow singing our holy songs 

while doing the wash, 

while making the stew,

while carrying babies on our hips,

while splitting the wood. 

And now we light our candles in reverence for all that we have, for all that we have lost.

We light the pines and call in all that we’ve inherited

from our grandmothers and their mothers’ before them.

A prayer can be wrested from a tree dug from the wood and a hawthorn berry or two.

A prayer can be made in the small movements of our trying.

While we fire the morning coffee and move throughout our day, 

Making our small sanctuaries

from the tender things we so easily forget are holding us.