It is a rare thing to have the chance to experience
the reality of the winter solstice
When the sun stands still not just for one day
but, now I realise, for nearly four weeks.
This year I have watched it happen – the same pattern
at 8 and 4 – for day after day after day – sunrise – sunset.
The high and low tides – the gloriously full moon.
There is one more week to go now. By next Sunday
the inexorable shift towards spring will have begun.
The end of the stasis, the sol stice, the impasse, the dilemma
the deadlock, jam, morass, quandary, stalemate, standoff –
the standstill. It has to end eventually. Gravity insists.
But in which direction will we be pulled?
30 December 2018
Riverview Songs 