Solstice Poetry

Today is Solstice, the shortest day of the year. It’s one of Mother’s Nature’s holidays, I tell my girls. So today we celebrated by going to the skating rink – their first time ever on real skates! They loved it! Afterwards we headed to a nearby, abandoned cemetary in the forest and sprinkled the headstones with birdseed. Some of the oldest stones were dated back to deaths in the mid-late 1800’s. I was captivated!

To some of you reading this, celebrating Solstice in a cemetary probably sounds like a rather morbid thing to do. But I have always found cemetaries to be quite peaceful. In fact, when I was a gloomy teenager, angsting about my unrequited love, I would skip classes to go up the hill to the cemetary to reflect and read poetry. Among the stones, I found solace in the works of my favorite dead poets, and peace in the stillness. I would stroll around and read the names on the headstones and imagine what their lives had been like. Maybe it’s my penchant for all things old… You don’t get much more vintage than a cemetary.

Tonight, to celebrate the returning of the light we did a couple crafts. I popped corn and strung it onto some thread. My girls rolled pine cones in peanut butter and sprinkled birdseed on them. By candlelight we placed our treats for the birds on the little apple tree in our yard. In the morning they will have a surprise, and maybe, if I wish hard enough, it will snow….

I leave you with this poem I found on a vintage Christmas postcard for sale in a used book shop a few weeks ago. It was written by its sender so you will not find this anywhere else. I think it is one of the loveliest, most peaceful poems I have ever read, and it perfectly reflects my experience of the peace that nature brings this time of year. Enjoy and Happy Sostice.

Winter Morning

In the woods

snow is falling - 

Snow and silence.

No wind stirs

through empty trees;

no memory aches

within my heart - 

Snow and peace.

The lake is still,

its pulse at rest,

Only my heart is beating,

While outside the window

sparrows huddle under the steps,

and a nuthatch is busy

at the feeding tray.

- Margaret Harvey Wilton (b. 1902 – ?)

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Tags: nature