Winter Solstice

The only way down is down, leaving the
light for the dark, allowing the surface to sink,
under the shimmering deepness, to the depths
where float our desires, to the things that the
world and our minds made, where all of
them no longer are.

A round black ball, an obsidian sphere,
rolls in my hand, turns on my fingertips, as
body and mind roll around it, slide like a serpent’s
coil over the deep black eye of the egg: fixed and
immovable, immense, around which the
universe turns, the world silently glides.

The Silence shimmers under the new snow;
the cat watches from the window as slow flakes
wind their way down. Whiteness covers the the
upper edge of everything as darkness peeks
out from below—the light’s support, the
unformedness under it all.

I am a weaver casting his shuttle, a fisherman
casting his line. Each throw my soul sails
out into Emptiness. Someone invisible tosses
it back. All day and night we play this game:
Life breathing life in and out, weaving our warm
black blanket, a universe wrapped in stars.

From the book, The Book of the Garden, © 2014 by Richard Wehrman. Posted by kind permission of Richard Wehrman.