December 2: Winter Solstice, Elizabeth Alexander, "Equinox"

Okay, I am tired.  I'm not going to belabor this post.  I have a poem from Elizabeth Alexander for you.  I chose it because we are approaching the winter solstice, and the poem is about the vernal equinox.

That's it.  Saint Marty out.  Expect something more substantive tomorrow.

Equinox

by:  Elizabeth Alexander

Now is the time of year when bees are wild

and eccentric. They fly fast and in cramped

loop-de-loops, dive-bomb clusters of conversants

in the bright, late-September out-of-doors.

I have found their dried husks in my clothes.

They are dervishes because they are dying,

one last sting, a warm place to squeeze

a drop of venom or of honey.

After the stroke we thought would be her last

my grandmother came back, reared back and slapped

a nurse across the face. Then she stood up,

walked outside, and lay down in the snow.

Two years later there is no other way

to say, we are waiting. She is silent, light

as an empty hive, and she is breathing.

Solstice at Stonehenge