Solstice Again

Let's celebrate the sun, and the magic of light!


After walking outside, faces turned upward, on this fine first day of winter, let's come back in, fix a pot of smoky Lapsang Souchong tea (the kind my father used to call Old Indian Moccasins), and savor this celebratory poem of Mary Oliver's, feeling more than a little pity for the hordes driving around the shopping center parking lots.

The Sun

Have you ever seen

anything

in your life

more wonderful

than the way the sun,

every evening,

relaxed and easy,

floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,

or the rumpled sea,

and is gone--

and how it slides again

out of the blackness,

every morning,

on the other side of the world,

like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,

say, on a morning in early summer,

at its perfect imperial distance--

and have you ever felt for anything

such wild love--

do you think there is anywhere, in any language,

a word billowing enough

for the pleasure

that fills you,

as the sun

reaches out,

as it warms you

as you stand there,

empty-handed--

or have you too

turned from this world--

or have you too

gone crazy

for power,

for things?

 —Mary Oliver

image:  The Pen-y-Gaer Hillfort at the Winter Solstice, Eric Jones