Large Fierce Mammal

Your carriage awaits! — Lajos Markos (1917-1993)

Welcome back to the hearth Goode Reader, and this incarnation of A Long Winter’s Night.

The Winter Solstice stole upon us at 12:19 Atlantic Time this morning and today offers 14 minutes short of 7 hours less daylight than at the occasion of the Summer Solstice in June. The bittersweet news is that it all gets brighter, and colder, from here for quite a spell.

As you know, today marks the first day of Winter as defined by the calendar, but from a practical perspective our ancestors saw the season’s beginning as soon as Nature decreed the temperature too cool, the hours of daylight too scant, and the Sun’s angle too oblique for agriculture.

I summed this up on another Long Winter’s Night, on the Christmas Day of 2012:

A Song of Winter

By LFM

The equinox of Autumn
Sees the harvest gathered in.
All store rooms packed, all larders full,
Each cellar, loft, and bin.

A bounty bought with sweat and toil,
With dash of blood and tear.
Long days afield preparing for
The shortest of the year.

Each morn the sun must struggle
Just to bring the light of day,
And daily weakens in the fight
To keep the night at bay.

Such knowing weighs the brows of Men,
As ice doth bend the bough,
With naught but snow to meet the scythe,
And frozen earth the plough.

Yet glorious day, the Solstice comes
With casting off of dooms!
Now’s the time to feast and drink!
To plant strong bairns in wombs!

For now is seen the Sun’s rebirth
And how the Night doth flee,
Giving back the land to let
Another harvest be.

This year we’ve got trips to the tree line to shoot down a Christmas Tree, the usual selection of seasonal documentaries and animated short films, booze, sex of course, and assorted skulduggery every night from here to New Year’s Eve. So let us commence this first day of our annual Long Winter’s Night series with this ditty.

Time Wounds All Heels

By LFM

“Time wounds all heels,” I have long heard it said,
And I’m certain by more than just me,
So this long Winter’s night finds a few empty seats
Before the Grande Evergreen Tree.

While some wounds are mortal, and others just hurt,
They all have their standards of care,
And the scar that each leaves on the soul and the flesh
Comes with memories, foul and fair.

Let who sits with us here in a skin that’s pristine,
Soul unstained as at birthing’s travail,
Be advised to keep tongue safely locked behind teeth,
While they speak who’ve the courage to fail.

Some scars come from teachable moments, you see,
While still others are gifted by time,
And yet more are mere badges of hopelessness from
Doing stupid things time after time.

But hoary or mint, raise your glass with me now,
May the Gods grant this single desire,
That our scars for next year be but burns from the rug
Earned by rutting in front of the fire!