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I was in the garden the other day. And I found a warm arena. A circle of evergreens. And standing upon a stump a mother holding her child. Homeless per se. A cold dark morning, the beginning of a new January day. Never what you’d expect, porcelain instead of stone. Pottery colors. So easily it could be broken. Like the snow beneath my feet. Crunched back into liquid. Yet some flakes drifted back up. Warmth neither melted nor shed. And there I stood halo of frost upon the head. A mother and child. An orphan within the wood. Take me with you. But nowhere do they go. Still and silent, porcelain afterglow. The sun will rise and the frost will flee. Mother and child took me home.

—Howard Hain

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