The ground has started to freeze up, a little, in our current cold snap. It scarcely did at all last winter, cold days repeatedly interspersing with mild ones.
And it’s early now, I think, for the hard ground of winter, compared to my childhood days in this city, and the organic garden I used to help my father with. Though I can’t quite remember, just around when it was, that the slowly chilling garden soil really froze up hard, the garden already put to bed for the winter.
And now it’s solstice. Winter solstice, shortest day, longest night.
I’m listening to Vaughan Williams again today, the “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis,” as had become my solstice practice in those last years of my mother’s life.
I find that prose is elusive lately. Well, really since late last spring, when I so confidently started this blog. Feeling tones are so hard to capture, the ineffable substance of time and place and emotion.
Perhaps a prose poem instead. Word-salad, if you like, to season your solstice. Let’s see what comes of it.
Slowly to Solstice Slow down, and see. Days slow to a crawl after speeding past equinox. A brilliant season, to match the summer's golden hours. Summer solstice's twin. A deepening dark, to rival the summer's light. And city memories, glimmering bright, Slanting setting sun like honey, dripping down bare gray trunks of trees. Oceans of light, fountain-bright, And over long, long decades, the withdrawal, of every last bit of dark, drawing in, to hiding places - more street lights, more safe lights, more safety! You're safe now, blinded too bright to see. This is the city that never sleeps And now neither will you. I never did get enough dark in this town enough to rest enough to see It's in the dark you'll see your light - Shine.