http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/sciencefair/2015/12/20/winter-solstice-first-day-of-winter/77667242/?ncid=newsltushpmg00000003
S.A.D. - Counting
Counting down the days
not till Christmas
but down down
into dark darker darkest
the dread winter solstice
shortest day
longest night
turning then at last
towards a touch more light.
Can I hold out?
So far I have
always almost -
whether in mild
New Zealand
extreme Scotland
unpredictable Australia
(south-eastern region,
where frosts are few
and canny folks take
Queensland winter breaks).
Now the notorious
rain-all-year-round
city of Seattle
obliges with softness
(last winter; this too)
but like so many places
gets all festooned
in festive follies
wreaths of plastic holly
standby of many years
mostly spent stored away
or the latest in lighting
a blitz of glittering
glitziest ritziest
childishness intended
perhaps to trigger
relapse to infancy
when Santa seemed
real, the Christmas
tree dizzyingly tall.
(Brief digression here
to dismiss the Southern
midwinter without
festival feast or festoons.)
What would it mean
not to hold out?
Refusal to get out of bed
till lunchtime?
Resorting to panicked
bookings to some
subtropical resort?
Killing December hours
browsing catalogues
of cruise liners sailing
for the Equator
with duty free liquor,
poolside shenanigans?
All that, plus refusal
to shop for seasonal
gifts for significant others.
Yesterday in the PO
a woman with twenty
parcels took their snap -
large family, she said
ambivalently. Send them
off quick, I said, force
them to reciprocate
in good time. Of course.
Now the last new moon
of the year swells nightly
towards fulness, softening
my dread of the dark.
It’s an ad for something -
trust in recurrence -
this too will ripen
and decline, and then...
My abhorrence
of the dark itself
will wane, just before
Christmas, the forced
good cheer, the burial
of a dire old year,
resisting again Seasonal
Affective Disorder.
Thank you, festive light
in every window but mine
plaintively bright.
Till twelfth night please shine.
[season’s greetings ’15-'16 from Max…]
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