I rise when the light beyond my eyelids Beckons. In golden earrings, silk, linen, And dancing shoes, I feast on Porridge and berries.
I turn to my scrying glass To see The heart-breaks of the world.
I climb to my tower, Grasp The treasured fleeces I have been given, and earned, And use my wheel To spin my thread - Weft for my tiny moment In the infinite tapestry.
Fingers red from spinning, I descend, Leaving my tower, Throwing my muddiness into the creek, My restlessness into the lake, And I return Wand calm.
In my caldron I conjure up a bubbling broth - An evening potent potion And comforting charm.
By candlelight, I spell myself Into quietude.
After, I open my mind to Divining crystal stories of others.
At the witching hour, I wrap myself in my feather bed And dream.
Midwinter is a time of darkness, a time when the light lessens and disappears, a time when we mix hope and fear. The worldly powers shape most, but not every detail of our lives. We can, as this Christian story suggests, as Mary might have experienced it, face our lives with faith, with belief that out of our struggles, meaning will emerge.
This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I have called my son.” – Matthew 2:15
by Joan Vinall-Cox
It was a dark time – Mary had wanted to be glad Joseph had chosen her but that strange dream …
and old Elizabeth, swollen with child, calling her blessed, saying a Child was growing in her too, yet she’d never… except in that strange dream;
and she had swollen and Joseph, angry and sad and puzzled, had planned to hide her disgrace, but he dreamed too, and married her but slept apart and would not look at her.
It was a dark time.
It was a dark time – the rulers had decided to count them all where their ancestors had lived so Joseph and Mary must walk
for days, weeks, and her so large and tired, and both so puzzled and hopeful and fearful. Could the Holy One really have chosen them?
Still they must walk, as the rulers demanded, in the cold, in the darkening time, they must walk into Bethlehem, this ancient town, filled with others obeying the rulers who wanted to count them and did not care about walking, or a room for a young woman with her time pressing on her, with the Holy One’s Gift demanding His time on earth, and no room for this family
It was a dark time.
There was light at His birth – light in Mary’s eyes and light in Joseph’s smile and light flowing out, pulsing out around the wondrous Child
light that brought the amazed shepherds, and star light that brought the Wise Ones from afar to worship Him
and light that the eyes in the dark could see, whispering to a man with too much power that he was nothing beside such Light,
and the Holy One sent another dream to guard the Light, to hide it in a foreign land
and Mary and Joseph fled into Egypt, carrying the Light away from the darkness of Herod’s massacre of babies.
It was a dark time.
It was a dark time – waiting in a foreign land, watching Him grow, and learning patience and trust, waiting
When does time begin?
September school or
Midnight at New Years?
Rosh Hashanah or Chinese New Year or Hijri?
Or Easter
With Basho’s “song in the heart while planting”
or Oliver’s wild geese honking northward?
When the ovum engulfs the jetting sperm or
When the head crowns or when the cord Is cut?
When does TIME begin?
With the diagnosis or sentence or
the narrowing horizon of age or
the forever of following the hearse to a grave?
When I awoke with a poem pounding through me?
or when your eye kisses these words?
The days are comfortable while
the night closes in.
I walk in sun-blind mornings
with crippling feet
and a dizzy mind.
I close the blinds against the approaching dark
and remind myself
to count our remaining blessings
as autumn provides
rich colours.
What remains of my parents
is buried
within my subconscious,
opened by random impulses and
photos shared by algorithms
in memory programs.
What remains of my parents
is buried
in a deserted graveyard,
silent except for the gravestones,
close to my mother’s girlhood place
.
And far away.
An Old Friend’s Gift
Reminiscing through
the weights of time
releases mysteries:
diverging paths shadow
memories of collective beginnings
leading to splintered destinations.
I am the guardian
Of other people’s treasures.
Trapped into storing by ghosts
I cling to.
How do I untangle,
Release these pieces
Of their hopes
Concretized?
Pervasive sadness wakes my nights
& smothers my days.
Nothing wrong except
the news of the world,
and circumstances.
Against the fecund spring
with its greens and blossoms,
the gravestones announce
the coming winter freeze.
The shortening days
and path.
are hidden in the dark.
Little time left
to claim joy.
and just
be.
Friendship
Beauty assaults me,
joy
bounces into my hands,
and my heart
at the long-absent voice.
Like the greening and blossoms of spring ,
joy embraces
me,
sings to me,
grasps my hand.
I hear and feel
tenderness..
Learning Living 