Solstice

The latest in a series of poems in my new style, generally rummaging through existential despair and all that stuff….

forget the solstice
it’s not a promise
winter still waits, watching,
a hungry cat,
darkness still waits, humming
its private discords
the days will lengthen
without regard to you
the winds will warm in disgraceful
ignorance of your hopes

you will walk in and out of doors
every day as you do in summer
will sit weary and bored
behind a desk or at a worktable
will gaze out windows
at sun or rain
at heads and hats that pass
outside beyond your walls, as

holiday music cues up in stores
and your ancestors’ fears, transformed
into adsheets, into shouting emails, into
commercial breaks,
spin round like desert dust
such dust as frightened prophets
back in the day

the earth spins on
the sun pretends to rise and fall
the stars budge in their bands of gravity

forget the music, the bright shouts
space itself is wrinkling in the dark
it will all pull together someday though not soon
enthusiasm depleted, tiring stars
jumbled and bent, everything
that is and that isn’t
mashed into a perfect sphere
of primordial ambition

it is the solstice
mark your calendars
and then throw them away

the only true fate
is never to attend
on what comes next

 

Rick Risemberg