Winter Solstice, 2014

What a wonderful growing year! I want to express gratitude for that, and for all who support and enjoy the harvest of our community farm. It is part of my job, as a writer, to search for new words that may express the message best aligned with the moment. Several years ago, in contemplation of the moment we call the Winter Solstice, I came up with the following. My teacher, Basil Bunting, the great Northumbrian poet, reminded his students, in his stern way, of the rigor of the discipline:

     "The mason stirs:

       Words!

       Pens are too light.

       Take a chisel to write."

I had a chisel in hand when I wrote this of the Solstice, to coax a celestial moment of the Winter season into song, so I would like to share it again. Note: the precise moment in 2014 was December 21, at 6:03 pm.
 

WINTER SOLSTICE

            This last week the wind howled for a day and night just when the moon was full, following a period of constant rain. Our fields were flooded, as were the roads, ponds reappeared in low lying land. On several days the temperature climbed to near 60 degrees, only to fall to near 20 at night. This free fall of the weather seems to mimic the market news and indeed many other indicators of the human social sphere. But as the daily pattern of our weather fluctuates our planet pursues a more predictable path in relation to the sun. We are nearing the time known as the Winter Solstice, at least to those of us that dwell in the northern hemisphere.

            At this time of year I am able to move about in the fields, from one task to another, with a comfortable ease, and with significantly less speed than in other seasons. Perhaps because of this, I actually perceive the day to move more slowly, as if the hours were coated with molasses. In fact the word solstice, derived from Latin, informs us of the moment when the sun appears to stand still. This year that moment is December 21, 7:04 am eastern standard time.

            Technically the event lasts for an instant, though we extend the time in our thought. Solstice is the time of the maximum tilt of Earth's equator relative to the sun. The declination of the sun-when it is furthest from us in the northern hemisphere-occurs at the Tropic of Capricorn. The angle of the tilt of the Earth is measured to be at -23 degrees, 27 minutes; for us, the shortest day, and for those who live in the southern hemisphere, it is the longest.

            After the instant of the solstice the sun once again begins an ascent into the northern sky, until at the vernal equinox day equals night. Though we now can name and calculate the movements of celestial bodies our ancestors would have been more attentive in a familial way. Neolithic humans carved notches in bone to count the moon cycles and the round of the seasons. At Stonehenge the smooth flat face of the great Trilithon stone is turned toward the setting midwinter sun, the song of the solstice. At Newgrange in Ireland, a site that is 5000 years old, for 5 days surrounding the solstice-when the sun appears to stand still-a shaft of sunlight at dawn illumines a passage through massive blocks of stone to light an inner chamber for 17 minutes. The significance of a point in time is incalculable, and the builders of these ancient monuments, with forethought, imagination, and muscle, chose to honor a central celestial mystery.

            For out of darkness comes light, as rebirth follows darkness. The Italian poet Quasimoto wrote: "/ At the center of the world each man stands alone until pierced by a ray of light./ And then, suddenly, it is dark." In an apocalyptic mood, and in a difficult time, the Irish poet Yeats, calling up the image of the Christian resurrection, intones: "/ The darkness drops again. But now I know that twenty centuries of stony sleep/ Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle..." Thus the salvation of man, one of the essential religious doctrines, is intimately linked to a celestial event.

            In a quieter tone, but addressing the same mysteries, here is John Donne, in some lines from a poem entitled "A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day, Being the Shortest Day:"

                                    Study me then, you who shall loves be

                                    At the next world, that is, at the next spring:

                                                For I am every dead thing,

                                                In whom love wrought new alchemy.

                                                            For his art did express

                                    A quintessence even from nothingness,

                                    From dull privations, and lean emptiness;

                                    He ruined me, and I am re-begot

                                    Of absence, darkness, death; things which are not.

            As we approach the shortest day it is good to remember that out of darkness comes light. After the instant of the solstice the sun will begin again to climb higher in our northern sky. As I watch for the return of the light I also recall the illusive words of an 8th century Zen monk who wrote:

                                    In the light there is darkness,

                                    But don't take it as darkness;

                                    In the dark there is light,

                                    But don't see it as light.

All of us at Quail Hill Farm wish you peace, the gift of stillness, in the New Year. 

Scott Chaskey