poems for solstice
so much of any year is flammable
In the first year of pandemic Christmas, living on an academic calendar and unwilling to travel, we found ourselves with several weeks that were quieter and emptier than we were used to. In that lack, we started solstice traditions. Now that the 24th and 25th are (beautiful) work days for me, I’m especially glad we have this earlier, quiet tradition together as a family.
That year, Jupiter and Saturn aligned in “The Great Conjunction,” and in the early evening we walked to the darkest and highest point in Watts Hillandale, where many of our neighbors were gathered with a telescope.
At home, we started a fire and sliced the cake and read poems.
Here are the poems we choose from every year, and here are a few songs, and at the end of the post are a couple of prompts, if you’re ready to be a little sincere.
To Know the Dark
Wendell Berry
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
Solstice Poem
by Margaret Atwood
This is the solstice, the still point
of the sun, its cusp and midnight,
the year’s threshold
and unlocking, where the past
lets go of and becomes the future;
the place of caught breath, the door
of a vanished house left ajar.
Burning the Old Year
BY Naomi Shihab Nye
Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.
So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.
Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.
Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.
Solstice Prayer
Phil Metres
In the name of the darkness,
and of the light, in the name
of the harness of winter's ice.
In the name of the other,
and of the one, in the name
of the weather, and of the bone.
In the shame of the ache
of what I can't tell,
in the name of the break
that will not heal. In the same
of the other, and of the one,
in the name of the anterior
and the darkness to come.
In the name of the middle,
in the snow of the gloom,
in the name of the straddle
between road and home.
In the reign of the cold,
in the name of the sorrow,
in the flame of the hark
beyond morrow's morrow.
In the shame at the marrow,
in the grain of the sin
that breaks up the furrow
that I fall in. In the name
of my hands that touch
the forehead that stays shut,
then touch the sternum
that stays shut, then touch
the heart that stays shut, touch
the lungs that free the air
(what can't be said —O ghost! —)
and then lay bare.
Psalm 90
A prayer of Moses the man of God.
1 Lord, you have been our dwelling place
throughout all generations.
2 Before the mountains were born
or you brought forth the whole world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
3 You turn people back to dust,
saying, “Return to dust, you mortals.”
4 A thousand years in your sight
are like a day that has just gone by,
or like a watch in the night.
5 Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death—
they are like the new grass of the morning:
6 In the morning it springs up new,
but by evening it is dry and withered.
7 We are consumed by your anger
and terrified by your indignation.
8 You have set our iniquities before you,
our secret sins in the light of your presence.
9 All our days pass away under your wrath;
we finish our years with a moan.
10 Our days may come to seventy years,
or eighty, if our strength endures;
yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow,
for they quickly pass, and we fly away.
11 If only we knew the power of your anger!
Your wrath is as great as the fear that is your due.
12 Teach us to number our days,
that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
13 Relent, Lord! How long will it be?
Have compassion on your servants.
14 Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love,
that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.
15 Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us,
for as many years as we have seen trouble.
16 May your deeds be shown to your servants,
your splendor to their children.
17 May the favor[a] of the Lord our God rest on us;
establish the work of our hands for us—
yes, establish the work of our hands.
[I WON’T BE ABLE TO WRITE FROM THE GRAVE]
Fanny Howe
I won’t be able to write from the grave
so let me tell you what I love:
oil, vinegar, salt, lettuce, brown bread, butter,
cheese and wine, a windy day, a fireplace,
the children nearby, poems and songs,
a friend sleeping in my bed—
and the short northern nights.
(Somehow this poem migrated here from the summer solstice.)
Prayer at Winter Solstice
By Dana Gioia
Blessed is the road that keeps us homeless.
Blessed is the mountain that blocks our way.
Blessed are hunger and thirst, loneliness and all forms of desire.
Blessed is the labor that exhausts us without end.
Blessed are the night and the darkness that blinds us.
Blessed is the cold that teaches us to feel.
Blessed are the cat, the child, the cricket, and the crow.
Blessed is the hawk devouring the hare.
Blessed are the saint and the sinner who redeem each other.
Blessed are the dead, calm in their perfection.
Blessed is the pain that humbles us.
Blessed is the distance that bars our joy.
Blessed is this shortest day that makes us long for light.
Blessed is the love that in losing we discover.
Dana Gioia, “Prayer at Winter Solstice” from book 99 Poems: New & Selected, Copyright © 2016 by Dana Gioia
The Light Continues
By Linda Gregg
Every evening, an hour before
the sun goes down, I walk toward
its light, wanting to be altered.
Always in quiet, the air still.
Walking up the straight empty road
and then back. When the sun
is gone, the light continues
high up in the sky for a while.
When I return, the moon is there.
Like a changing of the guard.
I don’t expect the light
to save me, but I do believe
in the ritual. I believe
I am being born a second time
in this very plain way.
What do you want to let go of from the last year?
On a slip of paper, write down your regrets, mistakes, and the things you cared about too much that don’t really matter. Throw it into the fire, and silently thank God for God’s forgiveness and mercy. Ask God to make good things from your ashes.
What do you want more of in the new year?
Write down in your journal your hopes and wishes for the new year. They can be as silly or as serious as you like! Share your dreams with God, and pray “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”
May this shortest and darkest day hold some nourishing hibernation for you.
Dangerous Territory is now available in an updated second edition and as an audiobook! Buy it in paperback or ebook at Bookshop, Amazon, or Barnes and Noble.
Where Goodness Still Grows is available wherever books are sold.
Love each of these poems for different reasons. Thank you!
Such lovely words 🙏🏼