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