21 December

A solstice poem for you all:

    The year’s longest night
circles slowly overhead,
    marking out the time
of the sun’s southern journey,
    yet even at midnight
the desert isn’t quiet,
    and with these high clouds
the sky not completely dark --
    a haze diffuses
faint moonlight over the land,
    lighting the night-shift
of predator- and prey-work.
    Here, a bush rustles
as a rabbit hops through it;
    there, an owl’s low hoot,
then the far scrawk of another;
    a coyote sniffs
around an old open hole
    before trotting off
to prospect elsewhere for food.
    The crickets at last
have departed with autumn,
    but overnight frost
is only temporary:
    the desert may slow
in the dead of winter but
never entirely dies.

envoy
    Wood-smoke drifts slowly
in the nearly silent night,
    but its scent still spreads.
A coyote flicks its ear,
then returns to its hunting.