Winter Solstice Poems

Enjoy this selection of three poems by three of my favorite poets to guide us into winter, and into the light. Happy Solstice! Happy Yule!

Snow on Western Red Cedar

On Winter Solstice | Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

On this gray, near-drizzling day

I write again this love letter

for the earth, which is, I suppose,

what all poems are, though they

disguise themselves as poems about

children or wine or baseball or snow.

On this longest night, it’s so clear—

the truest reason to write at all is to fall

more deeply in love with the world,

with its trees and its drizzle

and its stubborn shine and its

relentless hunger and its corners

that will never ever ever see the growing light.

Fall in love with the octopus that can detach

an arm on purpose and then grow it back again.

Fall in love with the elusive lynx

and the crooked forest and the frazzle ice

tinkling in the San Miguel River.

Fall in love even with this profoundly flawed

species that, despite all its faults,

is still capable of falling more deeply,

more wildly in love.

Snow clad trees

White-Eyes | Mary Oliver

In winter

    all the singing is in

         the tops of the trees

             where the wind-bird

with its white eyes

    shoves and pushes

         among the branches.

             Like any of us

he wants to go to sleep,

    but he's restless—

         he has an idea,

             and slowly it unfolds

from under his beating wings

    as long as he stays awake.

         But his big, round music, after all,

             is too breathy to last.

So, it's over.

    In the pine-crown

         he makes his nest,

             he's done all he can.

I don't know the name of this bird,

    I only imagine his glittering beak

         tucked in a white wing

             while the clouds—

which he has summoned

    from the north—

         which he has taught

             to be mild, and silent—

thicken, and begin to fall

    into the world below

         like stars, or the feathers

               of some unimaginable bird

that loves us,

    that is asleep now, and silent—

         that has turned itself

             into snow.

Yule offering

To Know the Dark | Wendell Berry

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.