Winter Solstice
On this, the longest
night,
I nearly utter,
"Not yet, too soon, not now.”
I'm not ready for the
apocalypse of light,
that asteroid of fire
and life,
to hurtle into my
fine-grained silence
to crystallize these
course-grained words too soon.
I haven't used up my
dark days
as well as I know I
could.
I haven't gone deep
enough
into wells of
memory
shadows, stones and
core.
I made friends with
darkness,
once I finally
acceded
to its purpose in my
life,
once I learned to sink
in -
whether as a yield to accommodating
sand
or hard winter ground
- I now allow gravity,
my weighty grave, the
absence of light,
and I give in, give up
to the depth,
my spine relieved in
darkness,
packed in layers upon
layers
of self, sedimentary
and cold.
Once I discovered the
value of humus,
steamy black compost,
how it feeds and readies
me,
I became fond of the
smell of darkness
like the horse barns
of my youth
piss and sweat
leather and harvested
grain.
I no longer need to
quilt darkness
with the eternal
promise
and anticipation of
light.
I like darkness as it
is -
coal, carboniferous
rock,
the furnaced
compression
of all that once
lived.
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