A Verse Flower Winter Solstice 2017

for Baharak I The watchers have told us for centuries this is the longest night of the year. More darkness will pour over our bodies tonight than any other night. Our ancestors woke in abject fear of this increased weight of the dark pressing upon their sleep. So why do I feel so light-hearted? So calm and poised? Is it mere habit that assures me of tomorrow's dawn? I am inclined to look deeper and wider into this night which grants me extra darkness to contemplate the blank sky, the occluded stars, the stretched-out hours passing slowly, and the infinite extent of night's wings fanning the silence of motionless frozen air. II Early this evening I saw the red glow of the new solstice sun smeared across the low horizon, and its light was so pale, its red so undernourished that I realized it held little benefit for us who rely on borrowed light and warmth. So I turned away and faced the deepest darkness of the year, perhaps with a trace of our ancestors' fear. But a warm thought quickly dispelled it. Instead I greeted the fading light as sufficient for my purpose, and brought forth a flower that blossomed in the light of poets and through the warmth of their friendship. It is the Verse Flower of your favorite colors I have imagined into existence. You have yourself imagined flowers into being. Last summer six stalks of sunflowers bowed every morning in gratitude, a hedge festooned with white petals gave shelter to huddled wrens, and in early autumn the willowy flowers we call Baby's Breath waved their fragrance of delight in your presence. But tonight, my friend, you can rest, assured that the Verse Flower casts its aroma even into early winter air. The sharp wind carries the fragrance awry, but do not worry: the Verse Flower shares the resilience of one of our sturdy poems. It needs nothing from you to flourish in your presence, except your eyes gazing over its growth, your eyes filled with the light of your being, the sole illumination required to make this flower of December glow both night and day.