A Poem for Fire & Night

winter on its way

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It is nearly winter. On the 21st we will celebrate the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year. We will gather by the fire, name the things we are grateful for, and celebrate our connection to the earth as so many do all over the world.

This is a poem I wrote a few months ago while gathered around a fire. I hope it encourages you to sit around your fire and name intentions for the coming year, and please feel free to use it as you sit around your own fires this coming winter season.

Inside where the lights are on and the furniture needs a cleaning, we gather up the plates for dinner and head out the door.

Outside, the fire is going, and our oldest tends to it slowly. Nighttime is rising around us, smoke from the fire bathes us and we tell our stories.

We talk about our day on the train, school grades, and what it took to make that chicken we just ate.

We close our eyes and remember— remember our own humanness, our own needs, both met and unmet.

We stare at the fire, the dogs chase each other around the tiny yard that for this season is ours, and for a few moments, this is everything—

the macro and the micro, the beginning and end, the then and now, the calm meeting the chaos. All is well.

Tomorrow we will clean the house, get back to work, ride the train again, go to school, walk the dogs.

But now, right now, we bundle up, blow out the fire on the freshly roasted marshmallows and listen to crickets chirp in the distance.

We remember night and fire, the beginning of all things.