Winter Solstice
It’s been the darkening time of year, when sunlight wanes and rays
come slant…
We desperate cling to summer days, but nature rules where human
can’t.
So, days grow short despite our prayers, our pleadings and desires;
We hunker down like shriveled things around communal fires.
Long shadows follow us around or herald our arrival:
Warmer clothes and wooly socks are methods of survival.
Sunrise creeps toward sunset as the couple strain to meet…
Their aim, poor star-crossed lovers, destiny will not complete.
The sun abruptly turns one day, as though it just remembered
An obligation left undone, three weeks into December.
And now it must retrace those steps of six months in the making,
To slowly follow in reverse the path it had been taking.
But we, whose life forces have waned, whose energies are fading,
Look up from this molasses-world in which we have been wading.
And hope, so limp and pale, so near the death we had expected,
Senses the longer day… Hooray!!!! And thus is resurrected.
Written by the Q.O.E.
December 26, 2016