Longest Night Yields to Wolf Moon

Knowledge,

for a time,

lagged behind us

on the longest night

when we would celebrate,

sacrifice animals,

indulge in wine, feast,

and flesh, ignorant of the science,

the moon’s tidal-shifting dance,

stabilizing the magical tilted trance

that allows for being,

for celebration, sacrifice,

indulgence, feasting, and

blissful ignorance.

 

Knowledge,

through exploration,

measurement, and study,

having long ago cast aside sheep skins and

rosy veils of ignorance,

reveal the illusion of

Sol’s seasonal retreats and returns,

our angles, no longer dangled,

steeped in superstition and myth,

but no less necessary for our

existence, and thus,

still worthy of celebration,

sacrifice, indulgence, feasting,

and heavenly knowledge.

 

And yet!

Knowledge continues

to reveal new truths,

unlocking doorways to cosmic realities;

the longest night, the redundant,

recurring, cyclical cycle of ending,

beginning, rendered trivial,

infinitesimal against infinite

intergalactic backdrops.

 

Knowledge stands before me

in this January doorway,

rendering me insignificant,

raising the curtain on liberation,

beckoning me to wonder at

what has yet to be unlocked.

I will feast upon her

in a drunken stupor,

all the while, a wizened man

howling at the new year’s Old Moon.

** *

(Mild nudity in video. Mildly NSFW.)

Written and shared for the prompt, Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Doorway(s), posted by Susan. Feel free to stop by and read other poet’s entry to this prompt

January is my birth month, which hasn’t held much significance in my life in quite some time. Susan shared some intriguing knowledge on January’s origin that compelled me to take another look at it. Per her entry:

“Door” is also the deepest root meaning of January:

 January (in Latin, Ianuarius) is named after the Latin word for door (ianua), since January is the door to the year and an opening to new beginnings. The month is conventionally thought of as being named after Janus, the god of beginnings and transitions in Roman mythology, but according to ancient Roman farmers’ almanacs Juno was the tutelary deity of the month.

Pretty neat stuff! How could I not break the seal on 2018 and scribble a few lines after that?