winter solstice poem 2013

This morning, at daybreak, a thrush was singing its spring song – fluid intervention in the owls' hauntier calls. Later, as I slid around in the mud of the valley by the brook, so was a blackbird. I know that, like the mild weather, it's unseasonal and it might be an effect of climate change. But oh how it lifted my heart after some dark days; and the fluting songs in an otherwise still day seemed to presage – well, something.

I remembered then the robin singing in last year's solstice evening, and so I'm reposting my poem from a year ago. Such journeys we all make, have all made, in this one circuit of the earth around the sun.

I wish you all a warm, heartful, creative and deep year's turning, and the wisdom and courage to keep surfing the waves, no matter how big, in the confidence and knowledge that you can.

May we all find peace, and remember what the truest values are. May all beings find peace.

~~

Just now, in the full night of midwinter’s night
over the traffic and the cop-cars and the late shoppers,
down at the bottom of the hill in the car park
where the red dogwoods flame, a robin started up
her strong ribbon of song in the lee of the storm, and as I
drive up the hill, window open to let in the dark,
a second tunes in, and then on the brow another,
each singing its loud hymn to the night and the cloud
and the brimming tapers of stars between, and this,
this, must surely be grace, a moment’s inbreath, in our
onwards rush, on this northern side of this lost-in-space
spinning-back-towards-the-light planet, our home star.

© Roselle Angwin 2013