Nightwinter is the season where we fly as easily as we breathe, bidding the cocoon of gravity goodbye, sprouting monarch’s wings. The season where cricket songs brighten small shadows beneath sleeping oaks. Where campfires bloom with the light of logs turning to ghosts. Where our ribs become bronze strings on the old guitars of our hearts. Where we dance across a pristine ocean on the backs of great blue whales.

When morning arrives, most of us shake the Nightwinter out of our coats like a dog come ashore from a lake. With alarm clocks and coffee and a dose of dark news, we erase the night with the day. But a few refuse to shake the moonlight from their skin. A few who roam in tuxedoes of poems, in gowns of dew and lightning. A few who stand in full sun, and yet feel the constellations moving through them. A few whose smiles are light as dragonflies. A few who refuse to remove their marvelous midnight wings. A few who drink rain straight from the sky and become children again. These, we call The Winterlings.

If you listen like a magnet to the wild iron of song, you are a Winterling. If your eyes behold a blessing between every pair of blinks, you are a Winterling. If you burn to paint the canvas of your days, you are a Winterling. If you feel the bliss of breath as it moves through your hollow chest. If novels evolve you and films make you weep for the dreams of your fellow beings. If you raise your eyes to watch a stormcloud being born over the sea. If you hold still while the twilight fills your ears with whippoorwills. If a lyric can swoop into your silent mind and give you chills.