The Still Point of the Year

The light is done withdrawing, ebbing like the tide, and now the days will start getting longer again—a little at a time.  This day feels like the still axis on which the seasons turn, the top spinning silently, beginning some kind of new motion.  And in the grayness, the dull chill rain, I am weaving metaphors!—tangled as bright threads in . . . well, in what?  A far Eastern bazaar?  A muffler being knit to stuff in someone's Christmas stocking while the embers of the pine wood fire finally gray and cool?

The holidays are nearly upon us, and I, young Scrooge left on his own at school when all his mates have gone to families and fun, am working on in an empty office, finding color where I can.
 





image:  Under the Christmas Tree, Franz Skarbina, 1892, Stiftung Stadtmuseum, Berlin