Newgrange

I will leave you with a Solstice Poem instead of a Christmas one, and see you in the New Year. Happy Holidays!

Newgrange

In late December

on crystal Irish mornings

a shaft of light will sweeten

a cave-like structure mounded

millennia ago by people like us.

Not for them endless moaning

about black nights

seeping into foreshortened days.

Rather, an undertaking to construct

an outsized earthen sanctuary

honoring light and life to come,

a dwelling for a burst of sunbeams

during the year's nadir.

Master builders these stone age

farmers, these Paleolithic artisans,

these Druids disdainfully dismissed

as primitives focused on the dark arts.

Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Toll

Last week there was an all day snowstorm at the cabin. It buried the seed left out for the birds that over-winter in the north country.

Toll

Winter weather drives

the hefty bell in nearby trees

as I hang a tray of seed

in stinging pre-dawn darkness.

The filmy veil of sunup reveals

a swirl of snow burying the mix.

I tell myself descendants

of dinosaurs know how to dodge

the blows of Borealis.

The frozen buffet bothers me

more than it does the birds.

Or maybe guilt over my neglect

of their dwindling numbers

stabs like extinction.

And in the air, a muffled knell

for a ripple turned tsunami.

Marilyn Aschoff Mellor