The Longest Night

For the Winter Solstice

Traeth Bach, Ceredigion

Into the longest night

The landscape

Of interiority

The essential work of wintering

The challenge

Of attuning

To all that must fall to earth.

To have walked blindly

Yet surely

Into all of the unseen

And stirring

Only sensing.

After every atom

Has exhaled

And just for a moment

We hang

In exquisite balance.

The long night

Is for walking

Among fragments of rock and dust

Pleiades and Orion.

This landscape of discovery

Of hardship

And kindness.

This deepening darkness

Turning inward

Slipping beneath the layers

Seeking out the perfect angle

To welcome in

The first light.