Turning Time
by Wesli Court
I. A Carol
The winter’s call is the raptor’s cry.
Our windowpanes are caked in hoar.
A star stands glittering like an eye,
We listen to the night wind roar.
The silent flakes fall from the sky;
Upon the updrafts snow owls soar.
A star stands glittering like an eye
As we listen to the night wind’s roar
And to an echo’s cold reply
That chills our being to its core.
The silent flakes fall from the sky;
Upon the updrafts snow owls soar.
Hear the north wind’s cold reply:
It chills our being to its core.
We harken to the raptor’s cry;
Our windowpanes are caked with hoar.
The silent flakes fall from the sky;
Upon the updrafts snow owls soar.
The moon is lapis lazuli
Casting ice to the frozen shore
Where winter’s call is the raptor’s cry.
Our windowpanes are caked in hoar,
And silent flakes fall from the sky;
Upon the updrafts snow owls soar.
II. Solstice
The winter solstice sees the sun
Turn once more toward the earth.
A renascence has thus begun;
There soon shall be another birth —
These snows at last shall be undone
And life again shall have its worth.
Our renascence has now begun!
There soon shall be another birth,
For dark has lost and light has won!
In springtime there shall be no dearth;
These snows at last shall be undone
And life again shall find its worth.
Darkness has risen, light has won!
Spring shall offer us no dearth.
The winter solstice sees the sun
Turn again toward the earth;
These snows at last shall be undone
And life again shall find its worth —
The sands of time once more will run;
The greening fields shall find their girth,
For winter’s solstice sees the sun
Turn again toward our Earth.
These snows at last shall be undone,
And life again shall have its worth.
III. New Year’s Day
Sing the year in, bravely sing
Underneath the dark woods now,
For the winter sun’s returning,
Shining through the greenwood bough.
Rime and hoar are brightly gleaming
Where the furrow met the plow,
For the winter sun’s returning,
Shining through the greenwood bough.
Far beneath the snow owl’s wing,
Soaring through the north wind’s blow,
Rime and hoar are brightly gleaming
Where the furrow met the plow.
Far beneath the snow owl’s wing,
Soaring through the north wind’s blow,
Sing the year in, bravely sing!
Underneath the dark woods now
Rime and hoar are brightly gleaming
Where the furrow met the plow.
Icicles, descending, cling
To the eaves that they embow.
Now the winter sun’s returning.
Shining through the greenwood bough,
Rime and hoar are brightly gleaming
Where the furrow met the plow.
