Wednesday, December 12, 2018

A SONG FOR SOLSTICE



With all of the things you have learned
from your long journeying,
with all of your heartache
that taught you to love and to cry,
and with all of your dreaming
that helped you to live,
with that same loving heart and merry laugh
that has brought you to the ocean's shore,

come out at dusk and celebrate 
the full cold moon
at the place where the tide 
kisses the tombolo,
then runs away, laughing.

Yesterday morning's dawn
approached as pink and fresh 
as a young maiden
singing the new day in.
Tonight shows itself 
as a wise old woman
with knowing smile,
tapping her cane and hobbling.
But she still remembers 
her dancing feet,
she remembers,
and, in her heart,
she is still dancing
across the beloved landscape
with joy.

You grew your soul
all green with wilderness
and wild with wolf-breath,
in a forest of great and ancient
tree beings
breathing peace.
You owe them
your every breath,
each one their gift
to us.
The journey has been astonishing,
magical; 
it has brought you
here,
to the edge
of the sea.

And now you are looking at
those far, snow-capped mountains.
The echo of the heron's call
and wild wolfsong at midnight
will keep you here a while.
The tree trunks you hug
breathe their smiles at you;
they whisper,
"we waited for you, friend,
for all these many years."

The sea sings your soul-song,
the only song you ever knew.
It sang you out of the desert
and over the mountain pass
to the wild shores
of Clayoquot Sound.
It has carried you so far,
and it is singing, still.

Come out at dusk
to meet me
on the shortest day,
in the place where
 the tide 
kisses the tombolo,
then runs away, laughing.

Let earth and sky
inform your grateful heart
that, finally and forever,
you are Home.


A poem that came to me in a rush, as I contemplated this year's winter Solstice on December 21st, the actual moment being 2:23 p.m. Pacific time. There will be a Full Cold Moon that night, and the next, as we enter winter's dark, restful time.

26 comments:

  1. What a beautifully contemplative poem, Sherry. So hard to realize that we are on the verge of another winter solstice. May it bring us peace and rest!

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  2. You bring the landscape very alive. (And I have learned a new word: tombolo.)

    Seems so strange to read of Winter Solstice as December, as we here gear up for the Summer Solstice!

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  3. Ruminating on life after reading this and --tombolo.. looked it up..what a lovely word! Thanks Sherry!!

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  4. A stunning solstice song, Sherry! I love the personification in the lines:
    ‘Yesterday morning's dawn
    approached as pink and fresh
    as a young maiden
    singing the new day in.
    Tonight shows itself
    as a wise old woman
    with knowing smile,
    tapping her cane and hobbling’
    and the nature metaphor of:
    ‘You grew your soul
    all green with wilderness
    and wild with wolf-breath,
    in a forest of great and ancient
    tree beings
    breathing peace’.

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  5. How beautifully you write of the land and sea that you love Sherry. with an obious desire to be part of the landscape which is so beautiful. If only more of us would fall in love with the land we live in where we see the value of keeping things just as they are or should be.

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  6. This poem has such a deep, rock-solid, joy to it. It is at once comforting and energizing. It feels like a solstice carol, and I for one, can't wait for the 21rst to do some moonlight dancing.

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  7. Love this especially; "Yesterday morning's dawn approached as pink and fresh as a young maiden singing the new day in." Gorgeous!💞

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  8. A stellar solstice hymn, Sherry. I sing it with you in the solstice chapel, with that full moon for a bell.

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  9. lovely poem, Sherry. it's comforting and warm, and a fitting poem to end the year.
    i will be eating glutinous rice balls (a custom) during the winter solstice. :)

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  10. This is a beautiful hymn, Sherry. I loved the idea of the trees breathing peace and providing breath.

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  11. Contentment appreciation and gratitude for all your blessings. This is the way to live a meaningful life...and you have managed it. Chapeau !

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  12. How wonderful to finally be home! And the home you describe is indeed magical: full of laughter, dancing (even if only in memory), and "wolfsong at midnight." Welcome home, Sherry...and Merry Christmas!

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  13. Every day is like a life, beginning and ending, and every year as well. I love this invocation and now have to go look up tombolo.

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  14. This is an excellent poem. I'm particularly enamored of the second stanza.

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  15. A really beautiful clarion call, Sherry. So lovely to read..

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  16. Beautifully done! Spectacular lines!

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  17. Dearest Sherry, what a wonderful poem!! I loved each word.

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  18. Oh I do love a song like this... to praise the solstice is so important for us in the dark north... Love the word tombolo... and the wave with their personification.

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  19. This is so lovely, I felt like I was being summoned there.

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  20. I love the idea of greeting the baby Sun in this way, at the edge of things, in-between light and dark... where Nature can remind us, once again, that we belong.

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  21. Enchanting and inciting. Luv the rthym of this piece. I learnt as i had to researh it a new word 'tombolo'

    Thanks for dropping by my sumie Sunday
    Much💖love

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  22. O,my! My comment from yesterday disappeared, but on second reading I feel just as uplifted. To see the maiden and the old woman, recognizing them as me--and the entire personification of the sea makes me very happy. I see the scene in vivid color. I feel welcomed by the generosity of a tree hugger with wolf breath, I feel the gratitude and wonder of this poem. Thank you. I'll be there at 5:23 East Coast time.

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  23. I will be celebrating in drum song as we welcome in winter. Enjoyed your poem Sherry.

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  24. Beautiful wordsmithing ~ sigh ~ This is magical and mystical … and yet the notes of the poem speak to the primordial - there - to be stirred into wakefulness, in all 'we mere mortals' … so that, the piece is felt at a visceral depth, that is beyond the sphere in which we proceed through the ordinary moments of reality.

    A lovely adieu to Sunday's 2018 Pantry, Sherry.

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  25. on the shortest day,
    in the place where the tide
    kisses the tombolo,
    then runs away, laughing

    Love the way you personified the poem with playful kind of writing!

    Hank

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