Poetry for the Season
New Work for the Winter Solstice
By Sue Mackrell and David McCormack
Editor’s preface – Followers of this website will recall Poetry Pathways, a series of poems about Bottesford written by Sue Mackrell and David McCormack in the summer of 2007, performed in St Mary’s church and at points around the village, and then published here. Jules Tobin (Julia Damassa) also added her set of sonnets – The Rest is Lost – on the life of Elizabeth Sidney, 5th Countess of Rutland, at this time.
Though resident in far off Hinckley, Sue and Dave have remained good friends of Bottesford. Now we hope to present new work to help mark the season of the Winter Solstice, Advent and Christmas. To this end, they have kindly allowed us to publish more of their work. These are poems written during the past three years to celebrate the winter solstice and the season that it opens.
If you have an appropriate poem of your own that you would like to add, please email it to info@bottesfordhistory.org.uk before Christmas – thanks!
Introduction
On the night of 21st and 22nd December the sun stands still in the sky. Ancient cultures waited, watching for the sunrise which would indicate all was well with the world once again after the longest night of the year. For an agricultural community we can only guess at their awe and fear, and the rituals they invoked to ensure the rebirth of the sun.
Early carols recall this theme – With the rising of the sun, and the running of the deer, and the Wakefield Second Shepherds‘ play in the Mystery Cycle puns on the rebirth of the sun/Son. Rather than prohibit people from celebrating such a primeval ritual, early Christians superimposed the celebration of Christmas on to the earlier festival.
We hope you enjoy reading our poems, which draw on this theme.
Wishing all our friends in Bottesford a peaceful and reflective solstice, a joyous Christmas and a healthy and prosperous New Year.
Sue Mackrell and David McCormack
Winter Solstice, 2009
Star stalled solar system,
Systems, as it happens all over
The known and unknown cosmos,
Observed by the peregrinatious magi,
Following Venus the Stellar Maris,
On their way to see baby Christ
For an epiphany of epiphanies.
Whilst our sun,
Like a tossed cat’s eye marble
From a child’s hand, just rolls over
The stellar equator, pitching slowly,
Ineluctably, towards spring
For our renaissance.
© David McCormack
Winter Solstice, 2010
We ride atop the primal explosion,
Spark from which matter came into being,
The very fabric of your body and soul.
There is a celestial hiatus in that eruption
Of energy as Sol dips over heaven’s equator.
For a moment the end of the world,
The cosmos? It crosses in the turbulence
Of fretting stars, moving on to yet another
Rebirth of light and stellar survival.
© David McCormack
In Front of Sagittarius
Winter Solstice, 2011
The western cloud was heavy enough
to press the evening star
into the pink lining of a black cloak,
Venus snuggled with the gapping moon,
under a copper flaking sky our star
takes a breath from its celestial duties
just long enough for this hemisphere
to tilt into the somnolence of cryogenic winter.
Kindle candles in the crucible of remembrance
and hunker down and dream of vernal natalis.
© David McCormack
Celtic Christmas
Berry-bright child, night born
by lambent glow of embers,
brought forth by fire light
in the dark year’s hinge
time’s shadow kindling
a rebirth of the Son.
© Sue Mackrell
Winter Solstice Eve
Winter solstice eve, the night of the yew,
runic marks of bare trees stark black against a pewter sky.
In the space between the dark falling in the west
and the eastern dawn rising, a stasis, a tension,
time suspended, until the sun rises low on the horizon,
lightening, imperceptibly, an opaque gauze of mist,
revealing a filigree of frosted ferns emerging into the brightening day.
© Sue Mackrell December 2011
Solstice Spirit
Ancient grained oak
hosts the mistletoe bough,
bearer of mysteries,
the oak spirit
in its pearl white berries,
winged leaves defiant green
against leafless wood
arching from the dark to the light
at solstice.
© Sue Mackrell
Yule Fires
Smoke tang on ice tinged air,
flames flicker red, frosted buds drip on
green-wood, snaps and spits,
as an oak brand thrust into heart-fire is
borne high, sparks arcing against the dark,
to kindle hearth-fire, sanctuary from
bone chill of midwinter.
© Sue Mackrell
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