Yule Darkening
Dark and beautiful, Holly watches, listens, loves.
We dance, spin, work, sweat, burn, make love, sing,
create, create, create,
spin, spin, out of control into joy,
weed, harvest, thresh, whether it be grain or skill or victory we strive for,
our humanity is in the striving.
And we are so, so human,
so very rarely wise.
Harvest, thresh, store, break our backs,
burn our hearts, think forward beyond today into the place of worry,
react to demand, demand,
spin, spin, out of control into panic,
anxious, bright, loud.
Dark and beautiful, Holly watches, listens, loves us in our folly,
gathers the frenetic world in his embrace,
Keeps us from falling off the edge,
So very, very softly begins to whisper “Hshh,
hshh,
hshh,”
So very, very gently tilts us away from the glare.
We do not notice yet.
We strive, weaken ourselves,
we push, drive ourselves, until the fuel is only will
and the will teeters on the edge of the world,
but we don’t fall off,
and we look up,
and how is it evening already?
Perhaps we can be done, just for tonight, just for a little while,
and somehow we remember, long ago, being rocked in strong arms,
and we wonder why we are reminded of that,
and why we want to eat fish and berries,
as the light draws away.
There is profound sleep nearby.
We do not all reach it,
but it is nearby.
Why is it that we hear a lullaby,
distant in some memory of some dream?
Yule Gathering
Dark and beautiful, Holly gathers us,
kith and kin, old and young, well and ill and teetering.
It’s time, he whispers, suggests, hums against our ears.
It’s time for wool and comfort and warm soup,
time to reach out across the leagues and pull our dear ones closer.
Time, little ones,
I will slow time down for you.
I will make the woods a quilt of many colors for you
to burrow beneath
and then let the colors fade to bronze and holly.
And dark.
Time to make the food your grandparents made.
Time to tell the tales your great-grandparents told.
Time to sing the songs older than memory.
Time to light the fire older than song.
I will make the woods a quilt of white for you
to burrow beneath.
white and bronze and holly.
And dark
Come into my arms,
light your way by candlelight in children’s eyes
and by the weathered face of your true love.
Come into my arms,
let your love be manifest in gift, in touch, in trust.
Walk in candlelight and song from neighbor to neighbor,
in sacred touch of care.
I will carry you as you carry me.
Carry holly, ivy, spruce, pine, hemlock, mistletoe, cyprus, juniper, cedar,
beautiful cedar whose flower has become so precious,
carry these,
carry me,
and I will carry you.
We gather in and suddenly recognize one and another and another and draw close
and the glare is gone,
and the din,
and we have stars in our hair, in our branches, in our dreams,
rocking, rocking, rocking,
To sleep.
Yule Healing
I am not certain, but I do not need to be.
I dreamed that I slept,
cozy in a cave with all my cubs and kin and the fires were banked and dim and somehow there were stars above us.
I dreamed that Holly, dark and beautiful, rough and gentle and crownèd evergreen, moved among us all where we slept off the pain.
He stopped and bent and pulled a blanket up closer.
With a word he calmed those who cried out in dreams.
With a touch he cooled the fevers.
With his hand on my heart he eased the clenching loneliness and then moved on.
The small ones he fed and washed and returned to parents’ arms.
The four-foots he stroked and told how well they had done.
He simply sat with the ones who cannot sleep,
sat and listened,
listened to the stories
then listened to the silence,
then listened to the tears,
and did not judge.
The ones who cannot sleep are particularly dear to him.
He moved to every one of us,
or so I dreamed,
and came finally to his brother:
exhausted,
mad,
spent,
broken,
leaves of oak still tangled in his hair.
Holly came finally to his brother
and lifted him up in his arms
and carried him to the banked fire and tended his wounds and broken head and bursting heart.
I dreamed that Holly cradled his brother up like a puppy
and rocked him and hushed him and healed him for as long as it took.