Say all the cheerful words you know about winter solstice
And the sun’s certain return to world,
There still aren’t enough lights in the house
To temper this dense hostile land of January.
Dark and cold fused into desolation.
In fact, I’ve added solstice to the list of holidays stricken from my calendar
Fools’ gold, I think, those promises of light reborn.
Technically maybe, but there’s some further celestial reality
Something beyond the sun’s recumbent slide, snow clouds slipping over the hills.
Something that the ancients acknowledged far more than we do.
That we need a den, a store of food, a fire at our feet, all the grace and protection of those we love to survive, to winter over.
Thank goodness for cleats and snow tires, for down and fleece,
For this sinfully delicious surround-sound heat,
For the diversions of screen and book,
For men and women who climb cheerfully into UPS trucks, deliver bread, greet kindergartners, swing up into the crusted sand trucks, walk with love along nursing home corridors.
Bless everyone who heads out into the dawn that hasn’t come and returns home in the dead of five o’clock night and puts spaghetti on to boil.
I was one of those people once.
It wasn’t a question. I scraped the windshield and went to work and shivered home.
The next quarterly report, the next almost-overdue bill, the next basketball game with its blast of fetid-feet air melting the snow on our boots, a tinny pep band, the security of Dave’s arm on a glass-slick parking lot—enough.
For sure I remember brooding chill in those winters—the nights when no stars burned in my soul on the way to feed the rabbits and the frisson of fur and finger that brought me warmth.
Still before I give this January more cosmic charisma—more blame–than it’s due, better I look instead at why I let the hollow soundings of cold and icy fog come inside and dim the lights. ©
