Here it is, the solstice. The longest night of the year has arrived. Physics and astronomy can explain how and when this moment occurs. But for me it’s about the mystery and the marking of a subtle shift, the feeling of a pause before the increasing daylight clearly begins to shift the balance.
My Crow
A crow flew into the tree outside my window.
It was not Ted Hughes’s crow, or Galway’s crow.
Or Frost’s, Pasternak’s, or Lorca’s crow.
Or one of Homer’s crows, stuffed with gore,
after the battle. This was just a crow.
That never fit in anywhere in its life,
or did anything worth mentioning.
It sat there on the branch for a few minutes.
Then picked up and flew beautifully
out of my life.
–Raymond Carver, from In A Marine Light: Selected Poems