Winter Solstice

A song of initiation

Honor
the horse
that drinks at your feet,
a feast
in every turn,
the pace of sorrows
outrun
in the vast terrain
of blazing horizons.

Honor
the time of repose,
of the sleeping
force
in the limbs
of a power so great
it can fly untethered,
like the beauty
of nights
where only the moon
can contain us.

The mornings
that you rise
from the splendor
or the stupor
burn like a rose;
the calling
of the cave and the fortress,
solitudes awakened
in the ritual grounds
of winter,
a solstice 
meant to light 
the inner hearth.

Surrender
if you find the strength
to stand
on the precipice,
if you can walk
the tightrope
of not knowing;
believe
in the hungry dragons
that sleep
in the cavernous moat.

Only then will
the unsuspected faith
of survival
take you down,
so low and so deep
that truth will reveal itself,
a golden apple;
seed of
the Midnight Sun,
bowing to no one
but your own North Star.