Salute the Solstice(s)

As we do each year at this time, we post a poem celebrating the summer solstice.  However, as (a bit back) a veteran of a memorable family vacation in Australia, I now realize that, for our friends the quokkas (and the penguins!) for them, it’s the winter solstice. 

And thus, to treat the hemispheres evenhandedly, we here post a hat-tip to both solstices.

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Summer Solstice

The sun at apogee, an empire all of light.

The sweet corn basks and ripens in its rays.

All memory of winter  has melted from our minds.

Yet even now the worm lies in the bud, one day to blast it.

The long limbs of daylight   that had stretched and stretched

now imperceptibly  begin to shrink:

even as the cosmos  attains its outmost limit,

and sighs back  to collapse.

Alas, the Elves of Ice  lurk still in northern forests,

plotting their return.

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Winter Solstice

Today (for y’all Down Under, whether marsupial or antarctic) is the official Beginning of Winter.   We celebrate after the traditional fashion of our ancestors,dancing at midnight,

     clad only in moonlight;

many a child was conceived on this day.  (And they grow up with magic in their eyes.)

Covertly, we rejoice  for a subterranean reason:  that while, nominally, this marks the onset of winter winds and bitter chill,  astronomically it ushers in rather  that annual apocatastasis, whereby the days begin once again to lengthen, creeping towards the equinoctial equilibrium of spring, and onwards towards their eventual estival-solstitial apotheosis.

Paean to the Equinox

 تُولِجُ اللَّيْلَ فِي النَّهَارِ وَتُولِجُ النَّهَارَ فِي اللَّيْلِ ۖ

 [Sura 3, ayah 27]

Hail Equinox!  Emblem of an equal King,

whose balance-pan lies level ‘neath the oak

where his hands  with open palms dispense

plain justice, to earl and churl alike.

Now doth the husbandman  fête Harvest-Home,

from sheavèd grain   bakes celebrating loaves,

and with sweet rising smoke salutes

the prospect of the fall of autumn leaves.

E’en as our Maker  sundered dark from light,

in one proportion, when the World began,

so too the equinoctial Judge sits throned,

and equably  divides the day from night.

Praise Him! whose broad hand shaped us out of clay,

and like the Equinox, parts night from day.

Autumnal Equinox

All summer long  we lay at ease

adrift  amid  the daffodils;

by dawn refreshed, and evening breeze,

the while  the Sun  the sky-dome fills.

Yet now behold,  the face of Day

confronted is  with that of Night.

And each upholds  its war-array:

there, of Darkness;  here, of Light.

Stark at noon  the balance stands;

th’ assailants are  of equal strength.

Yet mark how,  as each day  extends

it fades,  and lapses  in its length!

How too encroaches  on the brink

of twilight, when the birds seek rest,

the swarthy foe who smears his ink

alike on cloud-banks, and on nest.

Thus ever did the Gods contend;

thus e’er, the Giants  whirl the wheel

of Ragnarok, while sinews rend;

until at length -- the Noon must kneel.

Soon groan the lands ‘neath Winter’s torment;

in dark  the linnets  cease to sing.

Yet grant Lord, though the fields like dormant,

that from our ash,  may spring -- the Spring!

Vernal Equinox

As the nights recede, and the chill days lengthen,

finally something clicks within;

then Mister Bear   rumbles awake,

and lumbers forth  from his sleepycave,

blinking at all that light.

There is sunshine, sunshine  everywhere,

great golden buckets of it.

The bunnies splash about in it,

like otters in a pond.

“What a wonderful world,”

thinks Mister Bear.

Seasons & Ceremonies

I have always been glad  to live in a land  with a proper four seasons.   And as Nature thus orders and segments the year (which our pagan ancestors did well to celebrate with festivals at each solstice), so too do the civic and ecclesiastical calendars  mark the stately procession of history through each of our lives.   And since (with a bit of leeway for moveable feasts like Easter) these latter occur with calendric regularity, they reinforce the sweep of seasons:  the Fourth of July and melting popsickles;   Christmas and snow.  In our town this year, the first snowfall came on Christmas Eve.  (Well, ice-pellets and sleet, but close enough.)

The worst of all worlds, in this respect, would be Arabia, with little in the way of distinct seasons (mostly just “hot” and “hotter”), and the religious calendar -- being lunar -- slides around the solar year, with no lasting seasonal association.

In time, I came to admire the crowded calendar of the Historical Church (in which I was not raised), especially the build-ups to a deepened meaning:  not just Christmas, but Advent; not just Easter, but Lent.

Yet now, my own season advancing into that of the sere, the yellow leaf, I mark these occasions less.   The Fourth -- well, by now I’ve seen my fill of fireworks; and as for the patriotism, I do that at my current job (minus the fanfare and rhetoric) every day.  Christmas?   It’s not the same when your child has grown up, and has no child of his own;  it’s a reunion like any other.  

And even the personal milestones.   Birthdays are no longer welcome when you already feel older than old.   For years, Suzanne and I celebrated the day of our first date, and continued to mark the date long after we married;  in time, that fell away, and we marked the wedding anniversaries only;  while now, though we each day  in some sense  celebrate our continued union, the actual date is of little moment:  we’ll take our “anniversary” trips when it’s convenient, not when the calendar demands.  Unsentimental, my wife often volunteers to work on Christmas, so as to give the other nurses a break.  (We’ll celebrate a couple of days late this year, when our son comes down.)

Several factors are in play, in this loosening of calendar-sentiment with age.

(1) A general stretching of the sense of time, leaving you less conscious of what year it is, or even which month.  (Plus no longer having the academic year to enforce the working-season.)

(2) Living more and more in thought, and less in immediate experience.  If you are dwelling on fundamental questions, it doesn’t much matter what day it is.

(3) Memory now plays a greater role (there being  by now  more personal past than prospect), and there is more of it to draw on.

(4) Just plain being tired.

(1) - (3) have their definite up-sides;  not that they are better than the way things worked for you in youth;  but they are different, and, given that retentive memory, the result is a more varied intellectual output.

As for (4), what can I tell you:  it sucks.  But here’s this bit of geezer’s wisdom:  Live with it; go ahead and take naps.