Solstice

My mother died on the Winter Solstice in 2017.

This year marked the one year anniversary. The days of solstice this year, immediately preceding the Christmas holiday as they nefariously always do, were dark for me, in every conceivable way a day could be dark.

We wait in the solstice. Sit in the dark and wait for the sun to return, to rescue us from the dark. We feel abandoned. But it is not the sun who leaves the Earth. It is the Earth who runs from the sun, tips away from the healing rays, from the light that gives it life.

The sun never leaves, it holds its position, waiting for the Earth to straighten herself out, to remember how much, despite her scars, her wounds and her ever increasing burdens, she wants to live. 

The Earth waits three days for the sun to return. It waits in vain, for the sun has never left. After three days of darkness, it is not the sun that moves, but the Earth. It rights itself on its axis, slowly, day by day, returning itself to the light.

I have been waiting in vain in the dark for the light to return, when all I needed to do, is straighten myself out.

The Magician

The Magician

The house lights flash once at two minutes to eight.
With bated breath, we all restlessly await
a dazzling exploitation of human habit:
the appearance of the wand and the rabbit.

Across strangers minds there builds a unity.
On edge of our seats we anticipate
commencing another opportunity
to witness practice and talent culminate

In exhibitions of ever unseen skills
the mechanics of which we are loathe to grasp
yet so content are we to simply fulfill
our part of the bargain: smile, applaud and laugh.

The attention of all, spellbound by one man,
a crowd who came with no desire to learn
and yet, watching him they grow to understand
that a gasp is a thing that one must earn.

To us it's so seductively confusing
as he remains, observantly amusing.
Witnessing him command the mysterious,
we realize its the jester who's the genius.