Solstice - Dec 17 2021

 

Solstice

Dec 17 2021

Light is zero sum.

The shortest day of the year

the longest night,

winter here

summer south.

The holiday season,

where some find joy and hope,

while others descend

into lonely despair.

But I take refuge in darkness.

Like the frozen earth, dormant soil

I am inert,

at rest

in my dim underground lair

as time stills

and the quiet thickens,

my pulse slowing

blood cooling

eyes drifting shut.

The underworld of winter;

except ice, not fire

and no judgment here.

While in the Antipodes

it is high summer

under unforgiving sun,

photons

boring down

with the power of fission

the weight of light.

Light and dark, fire and ice

cancelling out.

An exquisite balance

of opposites.

So there would be nothing

without the force

that keeps these poles apart.

Yet how warm, down here

in the constant world

beneath the deepening snow;

the heat

of decomposing soil,

a dim glimmer of light

from above as well as below.