Do We Know

(Advent, anyone’s time this time of year)

 

I’m up early for the solstice

Don’t mean to be

Insomnia (tinnitus)

But there are those for whom

It’s important to be ready

The Earth will lean the other way

And in the north it will be cold

But days will be creeping longer

Into spring

We’ll have winter first

It starts today

Things juxtapose

Solstice (winter’s own)

Saturnalia

Birth of Mithra

And a few more days ‘til Christmas

Sometime between now and then

Depending on the lore

It’s New Year’s

 

Were these competing claims

To take these days into one’s own

A hut, a tent, a town

A castle, or an empire

And who wants them now

No one except those who think they should

Own time in the way that no one gets to

 

What we have is mishmash

I have a cousin who has her birthday on

The twenty-fifth

 

Thanksgiving

End of term

A press of selling and of buying

Saint Nicholas, Santa Lucia

Christkindl

And Druids, styled or otherwise, will

Light bonfires against the

Darkness toward a

Surrogate promise

Of good seasons

 

All the festivals in my ignorance

I don’t know of

All to say

Something’s coming

Someone

Do you have a name

I think I do

 

C L Couch

 

 

“The Giant Sundial of Jantar Mantar in Jaipur, India, also known as the Samrat Yantra (The Supreme Instrument), stands 27m tall. Its shadow moves visibly at 1 mm per second, or roughly a hand’s breadth (6 cm) every minute.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sundials