Another Winter Blue

I picked my way down the trail with a stuttered jogging step. Frozen footsteps peppered the snow; they looked like handprints in cement, left by strangers, their running pace made solid until the temperature rises. I felt the grid pattern of each shoe gone before me. My breath came out in cottony puffs, and I pulled my hat down to cover my earlobes and jaw bone.

Then a flash of blue across the path, bright against the winter whites and browns. A blue jay, I thought. But then a flash of sunrise orange. And I stopped to look. A blue bird sat on a bare branch, it's tiny body not heavy enough to disturb the branch's outward reach. A vision of spring visiting the hush of winter.

And I was glad I had come out in the cold, if only to see this blue.