For you, dear readers, in celebration of the Winter Solstice:

From the vast void

She is born, a long, slow explosion of light.  Dark
specks sing through the eons
red and blue. A planet collects
songs and stories, gathers to spin
pretty around one star, learns
days from dust and liquids, heat and air,
breathes human life.  

			         Stardust, I am
alive and alone on this dark path, creating
					     space
safe to name truth,
overcome trouble, honour beauty
avoid denigration in a world consuming
itself in its frenzy for freedom from despair,
in a race lost to keeping up -- those Jones's
desperate to have it all, never arriving --
in a population swallowed, in a more-more campaign
for mutations processed, frozen, packaged
resold to tomorrow's consumers.

Ah, but our dreaming collective
finds small notes, sings big
bright stars of morning into lives,
rekindling joy in the return of light.

-- Bernadette L. Wagner

The season’s best to you and yours!