Poem for Tuesday and Winter Solstice

The Shortest Day
By Susan Cooper

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us—listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome, Yule!

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Monday was chilly and felt dreary, as befitting the winter solstice. Adam was fighting with a programming problem for work, so although we can all be in the same room safely now, we only saw each other at lunch and he wasn't even free when we took a walk, on the late side but it was still too overcast to see the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction from around where we live. 

Paul made a Yule log for dessert, which we ate while watching the second half of the first Amazing Spider-Man, which I enjoyed mostly because of Denis Leary. Then we watched Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, which is extremely well acted, quite upsetting, and structured pretty closely to the play (so pretty talky). A few pictures of the shortest day of the year: