Winter Afternoons – / That oppresses, like the Heft/ Of Cathedral Tunes – / Heavenly Hurt, it gives us – / We can find no scar,/ But internal difference – / Where the Meanings, are –

None may teach it – Any – / ‘Tis the seal Despair – / An imperial affliction / Sent us of the Air –

When it comes, the Landscape listens – / Shadows – hold their breath – When it goes, ’tis like the Distance / On the look of Death 

Emily Dickinson – There’s a certain Slant of light, (320)

In honor of Winter. In addition to the Dickinson piece above, I included Annie Finch’s Winter Solstice Chant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Holidays, Pablo Neruda’s Ode to My Socks, Greg Delanty’s A New Law, Clement Clark Moore’s A Visit From St. Nicholas, and Madeleine L’Engle’s First Coming.

I am feeling the paradox of sadness and joy, of hope and desperation, of darkness and light deeply this year. I feel Dickinson’s “heft of cathedral tunes” as I consider what this Moment has meant for so many. Perhaps I support Delanty’s new law banning all holidays because too many have been lost in this Moment, but my heart is not there. It is more in the timely and gentle slumber of Finch’s winter which comes after a lengthy and painful Moment for our world, or in Longfellow’s reflection on the quiet solitude that can be found in holidays, or in traditions like Clark Moore’s visit from St. Nicholas. L’Engle’s call to welcome love into our broken world makes sense to me, too. In all of this, as Neruda points out, “beauty is twice beauty and what is good is doubly good when it is a matter of two socks made of wool in winter.”