MULTIPLICITY

for the full moon on February 1, 2026

Outside the sky is clear and the land blossoms with snow. Icicles silently grow longer in the eaves, drop by icy drop. They become sharper and more unwieldy by the hour.

I look across the muted neighborhood streets and see one town, one sky, one landscape spreading out before me like a rumpled, winter-laid quilt.

One — as an idea, as a solitary unit — has a comforting appeal to it. Oneness allows us to see things as whole and complete. It acts as a single blanket that covers up any disjointed parts or complexities.

But if I peer closer at the blanketed landscape before me, I know there is far more that I cannot see, for the world always conceals lives within lives within lives. In homes nearby there are people who are well and who are ill, who are content and who are distressed, those who are awake and those asleep. The land teems with creatures above and below ground, and there is quiet life in all the dormant trees.