winter solstice poem

I wrote this poem for the longest night 5 years ago. I still like it; and I like it better than the one I wrote earlier today, also for the solstice (a friend and I have been writing a poem each on each solstice and equinox for around 5 years, too, now) – even though this one is darker. And – the world feels pretty dark right now; but after tomorrow in the northern hemisphere we are creeping imperceptibly back towards the light, with the sun rising and setting just a little further north each day now, till the spring equinox when it will be rising due east and setting due west.

So here's to the returning light; and a glass to midwinter's turning, and to friendship – one of the things that might pull us through these dark times. Thank you all who accompany me on this journey.

Winter solstice 2011

First you need to shed all you know
or can name
then you need to step out of
your shoes, your shadow, your own
light, and your home. Strip
naked as the four winds
and forget being upright
unless you want to dance, and then
dance the stone row to the stone circle
and allow the sky to take your voice. 
This is the season of yew and periwinkle
of Persephone's descent 
to the winter god.
Watch for the barn owl
and Hecate at the crossroads
and prepare to hang from the World Tree
until you are sobered by silence
and stillness, and the great
white unending song of the spheres.
Kneel on the earth until
you become a reed, a snail, a fox,
another word for truth.
Be the berry in the dark stream
that the water bears away.
Transformed into all
you may be, step forward and cross
the threshold, gateway to gods
and ancestors, to what will endure
beyond all that you can imagine
of the play of particle, of wave –
take the hand that's offered, step through 
this gateway to the light that burns within
which now you’ll never lose again.




  © Roselle Angwin