Friday, December 20, 2019

Winter Solstice 2019: Labyrinths



Picacho Peak in Snow
This is the time when, sometime around ten or eleven at night, Sirius rises from the top of Picacho Peak. 

Picacho Sunset

This is the time when, around four in the afternoon, all the trees in the canyon turn red.

Picacho in snow-fog

This is the time when the junipers, the ravens, the juncos, and the wall stones, all pause,
reflect the last light, as if that is the only way 
the light will return the next day.

From Thanksgiving's Snowfall - Picacho in the background



Winter Solstice:
A Lattice, A Labyrinth

1. 

Stillness as the sun sets. 
The sun draws red from
the bare trees. Red skeletons
reveal the path each tree
took on the journey between
shadow and light.

A lattice. A labyrinth.

2.

A child slips into the world,
does not remember how 
to take that first breath, stares 
up into the cold blue-white 
eye of Venus.

So hard to climb, this grille
of dim cave-light and bone.

3.

I touch the shredded bark
of a coyote fence. My hand
touches my hand’s shadow,
the pattern of twenty-seven
little bones beneath:

Scaphoid, shaped like a boat.
Lunate, a crescent moon.
Triquetrum, the pyramid.
Pisiform, small and round… 

4.

Stand still as the trees. A
red-orange seam finds its
way into the grateful dark
between organs. I forget 
to breathe.

5.

A lone coyote cries: all
secrets have been laid bare -
and nothing was revealed.

I want this night to go on
and on,

never end…


 *****************

Have a peaceful, lively, sacred & mundane 
Solstice



2 comments:

  1. Pleased to be with you this solstice, in the sacred and the mundane, all one. love, Donna

    ReplyDelete
  2. Christien Erich-just found your blog. Really enjoy your prose.
    - your ol' pal from O'bourg a lifetime ago. ;-)
    pjtag1@gmail.com
    Would love to catch up with u

    ReplyDelete