For much of the country, it's the time of year for darkness and gloom. Many of us go to great lengths to fight the darkness, keeping our winter world warm and well-lit until spring rolls around again.
But are there also reasons to embrace the darkness around the holiday season? Minnesota Public Radio's In The Loop wants to hear your odes to the darkness: poems, short stories, family tradition.
Feel free to post anything of any length here at our Gather group. But what we're ultimately looking for are short submissions that might work on our next radio show -- postings that ideally take less than a minute to read. If you'd rather not have your posting considered for the show, notate as much at the bottom of it. Otherwise, everything is fair game!
Format your title this way: "Ode to Darkness: (Your title here)." And remember to post to the In The Loop group at InTheLoop.Gather.com.
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Comments: 13
He lives in rural Duluth, where there weren't many lights twentyfive years ago. Nowadays he is on the grid, and pays extra for carbon credits. He has electric lights, television, computers, telephone, the whole package. But he still likes to take walks in the dark.
Back then there was only the skyglow of Duluth, and the moon and stars. Those you could see really well, one of the advantages of darkness. But lights have been creeping up on him. A neighbor pulled in one of those doublewide prefabs, and with it, a streetlight out on the road. Pat is too polite to curse at her.
I'm not fond of electric nights either. On night patrol in the infantry, lights were sources of blindness. We tried to avoid looking at them. Amazing how much you can see in the dark, once you get used to it.
The only light at my place is a red flasher tower miles north. But developers brought power in last year, and my neighbor now has a yard light. I think about my .22 rifle every time I drive by, but I have become a pacifist. I don't even shoot at streetlights anymore.
A National Park of Darkness? Kinda interesting. Think Pat would produce a short story about that for this?
Some dark night shivers.
A shadowy snowfall dies.
Dream into the light.
My friend Pat has a family to feed and a house to keep warm in the winter, and he cannot afford to give his work away for free. I, however, live alone in a tiny cabin in the deep woods, and if I give myself away, no one goes cold or hungry but me. So, the best I can do right now is give you this ode, but I will tell Pat you mentioned him.
Thanks,
R.
Ode to Winter Darkness
I.
When daylight runs, short and low, and winds blow cold
And on the streets the puddles freeze in frames of rimed ice
We wait in dread of things to come as if ensorcelled.
Chill and bundled in attempt to out-race winter exigence
As kill-frost moon dyes all our end-of-autumn landscape blue
We stack wood, store food, and wonder, is it yet sufficient?
No use, our complaint, or to paint the darkness with contumely,
No matter how we swear or rage insane against the onset night,
The riven runs will freeze, the lakes skate, in liquid catastrophe.
Infalling darkness piles up there among the naked trees, nothing
Melts, nor does any bright ameliorate the settling pallor,
Until, driven into our final retreat, we sleep, insightful.
Slow pumps the heart, and slow the bellows breathe,
Around our faces frosty traces make a frigid wreath.
II
Doe and roebuck yarding in the field and wood
Enclose each other, tail and nose, still as stone,
While darkness falls, the temperatures implode.
Every soul travails up to a place it can belong,
Seeking inner warmth or a space beside the fire,
While those as take a southern wing have flown.
Old women traipse dusk from hearth to cathedral foyer
Inhale incensory perfumes under rosary, veil and collar fur,
Genuflect and kneel in candled darkness, repeat the ancient prayer.
And then they rise from sore knees, hearts alight as angel feather.
Everything possible and good is done, as best they can arrange,
The sacrifice chosen, the table and the tree prepared, come whatever.
As when hoar frost, fallen from the frozen air reveals the distant star,
As when the soul, arisen from within, warms bones from the marrow.
III
In the end it doesn't matter if the nights are long
Or if the window and the door is buried in the drift
What matters is the company you find yourself among.
When coffee's strong, kitchen warm, and friends arrive,
And high in the window to the north glows the Boreal Aurora,
You can endure; out-wait the dark and cold for spring's reprieve.
There are wild things that will not submit to your control,
Sentiments that will not be sensible, pronouns less than sentient.
Even cold and dark are instruments, listen, and the winter is orchestral.
Among the frozen buds, tightly curled, is a presentiment.
Doe and roebuck already feast on tender green branches in the wind.
There will be change. Nature has intent. Touch her and She will be sensed.
Do you think that you will last forever?
Life is change. You and I are weather.
IV
Under packed snow the earth begins to shift.
Roots dream in the dark, frost heaves like cold love.
Streamlets and streams conjoin, gather, flow, and re-enlist.
The ground thaws from below, dark rivers slather
Sucking at the banks, eating the ice, gaining cold strength,
Pulling at corners of the white blanket, wake the shivering grove.
Reds turn to yellow as dusk lowers evening's angle,
Puddles slush and splash and wonder what winter's worth.
The roebuck and the doe are dreaming of green grass in the glen.
And when the stars have turned about their course,
And the great bear spills the milk can on its glitter way
The elbows of the white winter coat are getting thin and worn.
Flesh cycles 'round and wears out stone and steel,
Skin outlasts leather; it hurts, and bleeds, and heals.
V.
In the beginning was the catastrophe of cold iron,
When light first struck its way through parting dark.
That's a secret it took us humans a very long time to learn.
And in the years it took to turn the iron to work,
To drive away the night and give hot chase to cold
We gained the brightest fire, we found the quickest spark.
So clean the fire burns, so bright the light, unsoiled,
And all the time and pain and blood we paid to know
Drain and empty from our lives, and gone, leave us filled.
God the Gardener cuts the branch, roebuck and doe
Chew what is soft, no matter how bitter, and they swallow.
So nibble the nascent leaf, Host or venison, what is removed?
We circle, round and round until the very end,
Unknowing, but in belief, we will begin again.
Richard
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/the_loop/
I mention both the Haiku and the poem.
Sanden
Hi Jeff. I wrote it for this post, last December 6, at the Red Mug Coffee House in Superior Wisconsin. It took all afternoon. I've never written an ode before but it was kind of fun. I write a lot of stuff, mostly prose, some poetry, but usually not in this formal style. Thanks, I was beginning to feel a little spooky. I tried this poem on a couple poetry sites but got no comments.
I wasn't entirely sure how to post to you....would it be better to use the URL Sanden provided? I am still getting used to things on gather, but am enjoying it very much.
Hope you have a great holiday.
Richard
The winter darkness in suburban splendor cloaks. Street and porch lights soften and reassure the few men away from hearth and fire. To venture out and feel the lash of snow and wind is satisfying and sweet. To endure and conquer if only for an hour before the lights and fires of home beckon with promise of light comfort and warmth. Beyond the lights of man the heavens laugh and twinkle faintly, content to play their part.
I was able to attend the show last night, a kind of last minute adventure. Thanks for the coffee and treats. Thanks for posting my ode on the wall. It was interesting to watch and listen to all the varied people who formed the audience.
I liked the show a lot and was pleased to hear Jeff's story about doing math in his yard on the radio first thing this morning. I will listen in again tonight when the whole show is broadcast at nine pm.
I thought the comments from the astronomer was interesting, and also the man in the audience who was talking about dark energy, dark matter. Well, he said dark light, but I am sure he meant dark matter. Anyway what is matter but a tiny confinement of huge amounts of light?
Driving home last night I was very aware of the glow in the sky from lights of towns I passed along the way. The astronomer said it is an orange glow, and I am sure he knows, but it has always looked green to me. I guess I am color blind to that shade of orange.
Coming over the hill into Duluth was beautiful, as always, but somehow especially after your show about light and darkness. And when I left that glow in my rear view mirror on the way north, I thought about the meaning of darkness.
There are no lights near my cabin, and I did not even light a fire, because I knew my bed would quickly warm to me. I stood in the dark and cold outside for a while, near midnight, thinking about humans and their festivals in honor of the light at winter solstice. It returns. It glows. We add our little bit to it, light in the night. There were no stars, the sky was clouds and falling mist. I shook my little flashlight, which charges itself from the motion in about two minutes, and turned the brilliant led toward the cloud. It blinded me, of course, as I knew it would, but somehow it made me feel like part of something human, something of which I can be proud.
We may be living in the darkness of the universe, but we dedicate ourselves to the light, not to destroy darkness, but to celebrate it. We search for the dark matter that holds our galaxy together. We call to it. A little led flashlight is not enough, but the lights of a living world......well, we will see. But in the meanwhile, there is time for hope.
Thanks,
Richard