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A brief Winter Solstice Blessing

12/21/2022

3 Comments

 
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Dear Possum, may the darkness keep you, as loyal to you as you are to it. May it protect your passage like fur, may it soften your hard living with kindness. May the rubbled, decaying floor of the earth be your feast, and may you be absolutely capable. There is no situation in which you could not survive, for death does not frighten you; you practice it constantly. May only the trees know you, beckoning you up into their firm, round arms. Mouth like a shark, nose like a pig, tail like a rat, womb like a kangaroo, may you live independent of every norm, blissfully unknown and therefore free. Adorable little nightmare, thank you for cleaning up.

Dear Butterfly, may you sleep the sleep of the dead, without work, without plan. May the place of your sleeping never be found, warm in your webbing. May the perfect stillness of winter, strung as tightly as the strings of some angel instrument whose song (like snow’s) is only imagined, keep you whole. May the taste and the seeking of sweetness evolve in you slowly, but surely, as sure as the days grow long again, and may the colors of your ancestors pattern your new, folded sails— at first in flashes, like dreams, and later set in geometric certainty, like stained glass. When you emerge, may the sun fill your wings, and may the breezes all be gentle. May the spiral of your longing unfurl amidst petals and surprise you with a joy that caterpillars are unequipped to feel. Thank you, for proving that flowers can fly.

Dear Owl, may your eyes light all the world, but with subtlety, like moonlight. May you hear the whispering ghosts and the small, warm-blooded answers, and may you know the difference. May you trust your knowing. May the darkness love you, and feel warm to you, and carry your fluffy wings like the sleeping breath of gods soon to be reborn. May you find your lover in the bottom of the night, in the center of the winter, in that cold time when the weeping is over and broken hearts lie open, and any sound at all sounds like the oldest desire. That knocking, echoing hoot in the blackness, that boom in the belly. May your lover’s feathers feel as soft as your own. May your talons strike true. Thank you for your sound and for your silence: for meaning in the darkness.

Dear Chipmunk, may your warm room be filled with the delicious fruits of your labors, and may your space be just yours, as you like it, and may you rest now, knowing you’ve earned it. May you own this cocoon, all cozy, and blanketed by earth which freezes and hardens to wall out danger—but turns to you, inside, its warmer, friendlier face. May you be safe, your midnight snacking unheard and unashamed. May the roots of trees wind their living presence around you, keeping you with their silent song of wholeness, and may the dirt taste like their love, and may you dream wise with their wisdom. And may your heartbeat slow, and slow, and your breathing relax, until that beat is the same as the earth’s, or feels that way. May you know the peace that only a wintering chipmunk knows. Thank you, for the tenderness we feel, just to think of you.

Dear Snake, may the cold not hurt you, because it becomes you. May the sun be the thing you rise with, the thing that is simply life, as in the days of old. May you sleep with your fellows in some vast den under my barn that would terrify my neighbors, but I don’t mind. I like to think of you, wound together like guts in the earth, a collection of lightning, power of medicine and death, all your potential unseen, unheard, unmeant for us and yet more thrillingly symbolic than anything we know. And when you are sleeping, this winter, may you never be found, and may you keep the earth pure, may you keep it holy. And when you slide out in spring, like small thawing rivulets of hot water, into the grass and into the seeps and into the low, curvaceous ground, may we leave you to your lowness, thinking ourselves so high—may we leave you there, oblivious to your glory, and let you live.

Whoever your animals may be, the animals of your place, wherever you are—in your trees and your frozen grasses, beneath your floors and your eaves, webbed softly between your stones and frozen quiet under your streams—may they rest undisturbed, may their darkness be unpolluted, may they be free to live their natural ways in the wholeness of the beauty they were born to.

And you, too, whoever you are, may the animal in you—whichever one reflects the innocence within you at this moment—be cherished, the object of your most perfect compassion, your most humble respect. May you hold your own space sacred. May the darkness of the longest night hold you safe, and may the light, when it returns, return you to your true self, the wild one, the one who recognizes sweetness (though before the cocoon, you never even noticed flowers, you only looked for leaves), the one who knows the way now, without knowing how you know it.

(photo-- cropped from photo by John Bedell for cover of Beauty, by Mindi Meltz)


3 Comments
Mar-dove
12/21/2022 09:43:30 am

Brilliant Mindi, your descriptions of those sweet animals warmed my heart and brightened my day. <3

Reply
rohn bayes link
1/28/2023 11:57:29 am

an amazing poem / last night the owl was in my backyard / most nights the possum shows up / and the raccoon / i love the animal imagery and the feeling of being in their body / my midwinter fire poem ::

we came together 

a cold sunless night in december to celebrate

the old way the passing away of the sun 

and the new one coming my neighbors and i

we grilled shish kabob

in the backyard and drank winter ale and kept the fire 

while the kids swung in the hammock chair screaming 

and made fire sticks to write in the air and stuck their heads 

in the pool

we talked about things 

and sent occasional directives out to the children

who hovered at the edge interacting with the elements or swooping

in close for a carrot stick or a taste of beer or a roasted shrimp

and back out again we held the core us adults stayed close to the fire 
it needed us and we sampled every bottle of beer on the table

we talked about the years

and toasted each other with a mild clunk only plastic cups 

can afford and when the time came to feed the fire i stepped boldly 
forward and thrushed out the brush pile for more stems and tops lined logs 
around the base and linked up with my comrades again

all alone or together the kids orbited

the galactic center created new radii exchanged the atoms 

of their breathing with each other opened and closed black 

holes found shadow and light found the fence line looked back
at us 
adults with a glance
to see where we stood dangled bits of broken sticks
in the water chased each other thru the perimeter
of the fire and with all their might hurled mighty spells
out into the dark and distant night

Reply
Kian Finnegan link
8/20/2024 04:15:19 am

Great reading yourr blog

Reply



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