Fire and Ice – wintersolstice25 by Sara Wright

(written during and after the solstice passed)

I walked down
to rippling waters
listening….
Frozen mosses
trees and me
old snow
overflowing
anguish
gathered in a
Chalice of Light
my prayer
for us
my dog
and me
to flow under
fire and ice
or tolerate
soul murder
numbness,
soul murder
I cannot weep

Imploring thawed
lichens for
courage
to return
 lichens for
courage
to return
to beginnings
(they were the first)
I ask the Cranes
To help me cross
one
more river….
the one
I could never
navigate
to reach to
the sea
Perhaps
in her mercy
Her Great Wild Body
will
receive
contain
mediate
one person’s
grief
and what’s
left of me?

It’s a lot
To ask
I know.
There is
nothing more
that I can do here…
the end has come

Changing Woman
switched her address
after last spring’s betrayal
She left a fraud behind…
that vision holds
me still.
Return
to the Bay
listen
for the call
from the sea
There you will find
safe harbor
a chance
to find meaning
if not
to live
in peace.
(how can anyone ask to live in peace in this dark time???)

Terry Tempest Willams calls this turning of the wheel the hollowing out of bone – When she picks up a wing of one of her dead at the fragment of water left at Salt Lake the bird sings through ki’s hollow center…. The suffering ahead is immense. Rising Waters and Flooding. Too much Ice. High Winds and an Earth overcome by Fire. Hollow Bones… The question she asks is my own:

She queries how to be in service to dying waters as she embraces interspecies intimacy and summons us to be present to the losses in our landscape.

To be present to body and soul murder – ours and that belonging to Earth takes enormous courage and steadfastness.

I ask the trees to help me go on…One night this week the trees spoke in a dream: ‘Do not give up’ do not give up – they said this twice. I listened…I believed. Two days ago, it rained.

In service to trees and to all of Nature I do not celebrate this terrible season of Fire and Ice, or a winter solstice turning that brings such grief. Instead, I turn to my shrinking brook, just freed from a sheet of cracked glass, grateful for the sound of flowing water, even if it only lasts for a few hours.

This is the first year that I can remember when I have been unable to weave a solstice balsam wreath for wholeness, for peace, for life. It was only after I returned from the brook after the solstice passed, that I could  imagine crafting a wreath that will hold a cup of water in her center because water flows and Water is Life.