Solstice

The warm summer nights have now betrayed me,
turned cold, winter winds that ice the bone,
beneath a moonless sky of shadow, velvet.

Yet through the dotted black, watching for the sun to rise,
hands pressed tight to fend the zephyr’s howl,
I remember what the solstice brings, besides just cold and sorrow:

It signals the eternal promise,
that whatever was far will come near again,
to return, just as surely, though slowly, as before.