Tag: Advent calendar

Birth Echoes Through Time – 15 December (2020 Re-post)

Birth echoes through all our time
Time shard echoes in our minds
Minds echo with contact cruel or kind
Cruel or kind actions, echo through humankind
Humankind echoes, with what was done before our time
Time to shed the old, to let new life echo all around

©RedCat

Re-post comment:

I’m running late for everything it feels like. But mostly it’s about the writing I have left to do. And the fact that I haven’t prepared the advent calendar as I had thought to do. So here a day late you’ll get the post I have thought to re-post to free my time up and celebrate my oldest turning ten.

Enjoy!

At first I thought I’d do a re-post today, of my first Echo Poem, to give me free birthday time. But my mind keep going round and round in echoes, so I had to write a new one.

Each year in the day leading up to my children’s birthday I have flashbacks of birth both in mind and body. Not something I mention often as it sound so trippy, but both my own mother and others have described similar feelings. And if your open to it, giving birth is one of the most profound birth-death-rebirth experiences, aka trips, a woman can have.

Image credits:

First image: Photo by ©Jonas Norén
Second image: Image Source on Wikimedia Commons
Third image: Photo by Isaac Quesada on Unsplash
Forth image: Photo by NASA on Unsplash


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Time Is Running Out – A Haibun, 14 December

As the days shortens and the nights lengthens to midwinter it feels like time is running out. Like soon there be no time left to do anything. The awareness of the coming turning does nothing to alleviate this feeling. Add to that a ton of course work left, a child’s birthday to celebrate and only ten days left to Christmas Eve, and the feeling goes from uneasy to alarming. There really is very little time to get everything left to do done.

Time is running out
This odd year is about to end
Darkness flowing in

© RedCat

Image credits:

First image: Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash
Second image: Photo by Gerald Berliner on Unsplash
Third image: Photo by Justin Veenema on Unsplash

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Two Lucia Poems – 13 December (Re-post)

Photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash

Re-post comment:

As you might have noticed I’m lagging behind on writing Advent Calendar poems so today you get a double re-post of two poems with the the Swedish tradition around Saint Lucia. Both poems are from 2019.

Saint Lucia

(2019 Re-post)

Walters Art Museum [Public domain]

Fair maiden
come to rekindle the light
Hymn signing
sung to heavens delight
Not a word sung
about your saintly fight
As a woman
with your own goal in sight
Condemned by men
to suffering without respite
To write your praises
my hopes reignite

© REDCAT
Claudia Gründer [CC BY-SA 3.0]

All trough childhood and adolescence I where one of those girls that sang like the angels in Lucia processions. In Sweden it’s all about upcoming midwinter and celebrating the returning light. Also the protestant church don’t have saints so the real symbolism of the story of Saint Lucia of Syracuse has gotten lost along the way.

Also posted to OpenLinkNight #256 at dVerse. Which is why this poem is in the dVerse form of a Quadrille – a poem of 44 words, not counting the titel.

Kolforn (Wikimedia) [CC BY-SA 4.0]

Cold Moon

(2019 Re-post)

Preparations for the last full moon abounds
Where we let the Midwinter darkness fall
Then light return with a fair singing maiden
Her clear voice and it’s adoration turns our eyes upon the star
It’s light compelling us to contemplate
the birth-death-rebirth of the fisher king
Yearly reminder to shed the old and start anew

© REDCAT
Image Source

Where I grew up. A several hundreds year old small, pre-steam industrial-mining-farm-wood-lakes town. Folklore still ran deep even in the 1980s.

“The tradition of Lussevaka – to stay awake through the Lussinatt to guard oneself and the household against evil, has found a modern form through throwing parties until daybreak. ”
– Wikipedia

As a teenager and young adult, no real adult found a problem with us staying out late at discos and parties. As long as some of us (nearly, girls only) also showed up in the early morning hours, clear eyed and sweet voiced to carry lights in our hair or hands singing hymns to Lucia and Light re-born.

So, I grew up with Lucia vigil. It’s a tradition dating back to when Lucia occurred on midwinter, the origin might be somewhere in the pre-christian era, but it is known from the 15th and 16th century. Meaning before Sweden switched to the Gregorian calendar in 1753.

As Midwinter is the opposite point of the year from Midsummer the veil between the worlds where thin, and you kept vigil to keep harmful spirits away and to celebrate and greet the light of a new year in form of a fair singing maiden with light in her hair.

Written for Kerry’s prompt on Real Toads ~ Art FLASH! / 55 in December.
55 words without the title.
Read my first contribution to this double feature prompt here.

Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash
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Late Train Blues – 10 December

The train is late
Very, very late
Making everyone sigh and grumble
Making every stomach rumble
Creeping past endless white fields and forests
Blanketed by a coal black cloudy sky
Begging the question if there even is a destination
Or if we’ll just keep traveling for the rest of life’s duration

© RedCat

Image credits:

https://unsplash.com/@sandramode

https://unsplash.com/@larisabirta

https://unsplash.com/@iartiom

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Susurration of Snow – 9 December

The pitch black midwinter night
Is filled with falling white
Giving off it’s own light

Quieting every city sound
Only the susurration of flakes tumbling around
Before they land sparkling on the ground

In the landscapes muted glow
Keep faith and let the heart know
There are buds of new life hibernating under the snow

©REDCAT
©RedCat

Image credits:

First image: Photo by Jessica Fadel on Unsplash
Second image: Photo by RedCat
Third image: Photo by Kajetan Sumila on Unsplash
Forth image: Photo by Viva Zhang on Unsplash

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Snowflakes Dances Down – 8 December (2021 Re-post)

Snowflakes dances down
Tickling nose and cheeks
Covering the world with a down blanket

Muffles every sound
Except the footfalls squeak
The swish of a winter jacket

Breath deep and ground
With your hidden sides speak
Plant seeds for regrowth under the snow carpet

©RedCat

Re-post comment:

Looking for a post to fit both Wandering the Archives Wednesday and the Advent Calendar I came across this from February of this year. And I wanted to share the wonder of a snowy winter.

Enjoy!

Image credits:

First image: Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
Second image: Photo by Egor Kamelev on Pexels.com
Third image: Photo by Darius Cotoi on Unsplash

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Icy Blue Sky – 7 December

The afternoon sky is icy blue
Quickly deepening to a darker hue
The new moon is a thin sickle
Midwinter energies begin to tickle
The turning of the year is soon
Following upon the cold wolf moon

The time to prepare is here
Assess, take stock, root out old fears
Let go of mental cobwebs and rust
Give space to shed tears if you must
Envision yourself in the place you dream off
Let the new year new life begin and take off

©REDCAT

Image credits:

First image: Photo by Jordan Steranka on Unsplash
Second image: Photo by Jônatas Tinoco on Unsplash
Third image: Photo by Prashant Gurung on Unsplash

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Surrender Sky-clad to the Moon – 6 December (2020 Re-post)

To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night

On Love – Kahlil Gibran

Surrender sky-clad to the Moon
Heal, love, rest, grow, bathed in her glow
Soul singing her clear silver tune
Surrender sky-clad to the Moon
Accept the Goddess given boon
Love that will never cease to flow
Surrender sky-clad to the Moon
Heal, love, rest, grow, bathed in her glow

©RedCat

Re-post comment:

I have friends who actually go bathing outside all year round. Which makes me cold by just thinking about it. So does imagining dancing sky-clad to the moon in this freezing cold. So with a shiver and a laugh. This is tonight’s advent calendar post. :-)

Kahlil Gibran is a favorite of mine, so the Epigraph was easy to choose. The Triolet is a 8 line Octave form I tried before. As in Sit, waiting, longing, only you and Make Art – Triolet inspired by Neil Gaiman and Chris Riddell.

Image credits:

First image: Photo by samer daboul from Pexels
Second image: Photo by Fabian Reitmeier from Pexels
Third image: Photo by Joel & Jasmin Førestbird on Unsplash

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