Splitting the Solstice

It's Thor's day. The mailbox opened to a cool, cloudy, calm morning here in TulseyTown ahead of a rainy weekend to come...

Looking for a miracle? If your eyes, ears, senses are open — miracles themselves — everything will be a miracle for you. You can't go searching for a miracle. To do so presupposes there isn't one. Stand still, let awe come to you.

Today marks the halfway point between the Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox here in the Northern Hemisphere and we are getting closer to an equal day and night. In the Gaelic tradition, today is a festival called Saint Brigid's Day that is celebrated as the start of spring. The tradition has been dated as far back as 9000 years into the Neolithic.

Another major influence on my poetic life, poet Galway Kinnell was born 97 years ago today in 1927 Providence, Rhode Island. Apropos Valentine's Day this month, check out his poem “After Making Love We Hear Footsteps.”

It's the birth date of S. J. Perelman. The humorist was born in 1904 Brooklyn, New York.

And Langston Hughes was born 122 years ago today. The poet and novelist was born in 1902 Joplin, Missouri.

The man splitting wood in the daybreak

The man splitting wood in the daybreak

looks strong, as though, if one weakened,

one could turn to him and he would help

… We could turn to our fathers,

but they help us only by the unperplexed

looking-back of the numerals cut into headstones

… Everyone who could help goes or hasn’t arrived.

What about the man splitting wood in the daybreak,

who looked strong? That was years ago. That was me.

— Galway Kinnell, from Three Books. Houghton Mifflin Company. 2002.

I don't know where we're going or how we'll get there, but when we get there we'll be there - and that's something, even if it's nothing. – S.J. Perelman