This week’s selection of poems celebrates the upcoming winter solstice—the light and dark, the before and after, the seasons of our lives.
Losing Light
when I was a child
I never noticed
October ceilings
sliding down to
black December nights
but now
I feel the sunsets of fall
crushing the daylight
down to the floor
thin oily light
oozing under the door
I long for the moment
when the ceiling starts to rise
sucking daylight
into the room
the full blown
Spring flown
goldlight
till it pours out
the windows of summer
Jesse’s Solstice
Pee-pa!
Pee-pa!
my grandson yells
a new name
his name for me
this from the young one
the newest
the 18-month grandson
wordless last solstice
has burst forth since
word
by
word – light
– truck
– mommy
Like the new sun
pushing aside
short gray days
one at a time
he adds new words
his own words
Adam-like
naming
defining
brightening
the world around him
in his own terms
Pee-pa!
Pee-pa!
here comes the
grand
sun
Pee-pa!
Pee-pa!
Seasons of Light
skinny spring sun
eases green from the ground
sucking deep-down juice
from the root of things
pulling and rounding
into pregnant June sunsets
till gravity wins
and earth drains the color
out of the sky
from petals
from stems
reducing us all
to quivering pale stalks
rattling through long winter nights
Endless Deep
Albatross lock
ten-foot wings
into cliff jumper
hang-gliders
to swoop and soar
bank and glide
on ocean wave updrafts
round
and around the globe
for years without time
till a pulsing need
draws them to land
to the spot they were bred
to breed in turn
before
returning
to hover the endless deep
like us
The following is a timeless analogy from Venerable Bede a 7th Century Monk
The present life, O king, seems to me, in comparison with that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the room wherein you sit at supper in winter amid your officers and ministers, with a good fire in the midst whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad; the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door and immediately out another, whilst he is within is safe from the wintry storm but after a short space of fair weather he immediately vanishes out of your sight into the dark winter from which he has emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space but of what went before or what is to follow we are ignorant.
Free-Floating Stories+ 
Nice poems, Joe. Glad to read them. I’ll look at your early pieces sometime. I was busy with the Prop 2 campaign. Now I’m busy reconnecting with normal life.
Bob Weir
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Good work on the campaign. Appreciate your effort.
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So lovely!
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