December winding down

 Winter Solstice '23

Henry in creek, nearing Winter Solstice

Winter Solstice is more a time than a day,

astronomically there is a point, a pause,

when the Sun stops slipping further and further south

and slowly starts its return toward the north,

yet our world then feels as if we've hit the snooze button,

winter starts, daylight slowly lengthens,

yet its promise doesn't yet pay off in warmth,

deciduous trees know that truth,

that freezing cold must and will assert itself

over us for months to come,

these days we celebrate the Light

while the Dark holds us in its sway,

absence, loss, retreat, all the frame

within which our pictures live,

we are a season away from courageous flowers

who will shout their hope,

with full knowledge that the air will remember the Dark

and find the way to chill us to the bone, still,

that chill will blight if there's too much risk in the bud, in the leaf,

now is the time to know and love the Dark for its truths,

for without absence how can we appreciate presence?

we love the Light and celebrate it with Hanukkah,

with Christmas lights that draw us toward them and joy,

we contain multitudes,

and the time of the Winter Solstice calls us

to notice what the cosmos gives us, 

and what it doesn't,

at least not yet,

this time calls us to celebrate what cannot yet be:

we share, and eat, the bounty from the last year,

while we also know that Spring comes

with both hope and despair,

for next year's bounty for the body

is more of Summer than of Spring,

the time of the Winter Solstice finds power in contrast,

a bright morning Sun can follow the blackest night.

Sol Pole

Early day Sun.

by Henry H. Walker

December  17, ‘23