Receiving the darkness

The word solstice was born from the Latin sol ( sun) and sistere ( to stand still). 

Solstice, winter

This darker interlude
could be a meditation,
a reckoning with the deceptive
nature of time.

The exacting practice
of being present

is to show up
for each round moment
as if it were everything.

This is what might save
me, or us—
the stilling to receive
each bundled particle of time,

and if we get really quiet,
and keep the flame behind
our closed lids
fixed on the darkness
before us,

we notice it is leaving
at the instant it arrives.

In truth
there is none such transition,
no arriving, no departure.

It is all a single stroke
of paint
on the mortarboard
of existence.

“ It’s all the same f—-ing day, man.” —Janis Joplin, sage disguised as an addict with a glorious set of vocal chords.

As a child, I noticed the shortened daylight only well after the length was returning to the days. Think late January in the northeast US, when the sun slips away almost a full hour later than it did when winter knocks proper on the door. Once I recognized this pattern in myself, it became metaphor for oh so many things.  If it’s mostly always getting lighter just when I notice the dark, then surely I can and will sing right through.

-Melinda Coppola