Long Nights, Short Days

I woke with the just past full moon shining brightly in the west window of my room. it was a comforting light and I left the curtains wide there to moon bathe a bit. Later as dawn was approaching it was still there shining, making the morning brighter than one might expect with a month to go before winter solstice. It reminded me that it is time to bring out the Advent wreath (for Christians) or the Sun Wheel wreath (for earth based religions.)  A wonderful blog on this tradition that can be adapted for all faiths or those with none, to mindfully walk through the weeks as the Northern Hemisphere’s sun dies so that it can be reborn at Solstice..https://www.owlsdaughter.com/owls-wings/

One tradition calls the Full Moon just past the Mourning Moon. Now you know why. A friend has sent a link regarding the Advent/SunWheel wreath that says each candle lit at dusk represents a quality. The first Sunday you light the candle is for Hope. So I felt that today’s poetry practice needed to reflect that somehow.  My dawn poetry practice, at the liminal opposite pole in the day, is a virtual candle being lit. Although I am assembling a wreath and I will light a purple candle tonight and send the intention of hope out into a world where many feel it in short supply.

Long nights, short days

Long nights, short days
Frost full moon
The mourning moon
 
The juice all gone
Leaves blackened
Grass wizened white
 
Long nights, short days
Moon is high
Even as the sun rises
 
Day breaks rosy tipped
An amber trapped glow
The light will be reborn
We’ve not so long now to go
 
Short days, long nights
Before the sun will come again
Casting some long shadows
For now we have its fossil glow
 
Meanwhile, Mother Moon
Hangs her lamp
To thaw the frost
 
Short days, long nights
Not all is ever lost
Hope dangles from the moon
 
Light lives in long nights
Light lives in short days
Dark lives in long nights
Dark lives in short days
 
Hope lives in light’s rays
Hope shelters in the dark
Hope lives on in short days
Hope is night’s bright spark.
 
Copyright© Bee Smith2018

I really did pad out in my slippers with my iPad camera when I let out the Old Dog this morning. I wanted to capture Mother Moon with her lamp raised high.