PicoBlog

Dark of the moon and the longest night.

The deepest dark is here. Long live the light!

Today, for our continuing Old Advent, I am sharing my favourite Winter Solstice poems as we await the newborn sun. I wish for us all a blessed and meaningful Midwinter's Day and a very happy Yule.

The Shortest Day by Susan Cooper

And so the shortest day came and the year died

And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world

Came people singing, dancing,

To drive the dark away.

They lighted candles in the winter trees;

They hung their homes with evergreen;

They burned beseeching fires all night long

To keep the year alive,

And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake

They shouted, reveling.

Through all the frosty ages you can hear them

Echoing behind us - Listen!!

All the long echoes sing the same delight,

This shortest day,

As promise wakens in the sleeping land:

They carol, fest, give thanks,

And dearly love their friends,

And hope for peace.

And so do we, here, now,

This year and every year.

Welcome Yule.

Maeshow: Midwinter by George MacKay Brown

Equinox to Hallowmas, darkness

falls like the leaves. The

tree of the sun is stark.

On the loom of winter, shadows

gather in a web; then the

shuttle of St Lucy makes a

pause; a dark weave

fills the loom.

The blackness is solid as a

stone that locks a tomb.

No star shines there.

Then begins the true ceremony of

the sun, when the one

last fleeting solstice flame

is caught up by a

midnight candle.

Children sing under a street

lamp, their voices like

leaves of light.

Approaching Solstice by Patricia Monaghan

Yes, friends, the darkness wins but these

short days so celebrate light:

today, the lemon sunrise lasted a few

hours until sunset, all day the snow

glowed pink and purple in the trees.

This is not a time of black and white.

My friend, outside us, among us too,

let's sing what winter forces us to know:

Joy and colour bloom despite the night.

We measure warmth by love, not by degrees.

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