Timothy Steele -- title poem is "Toward the Winter Solstice" (2005) - presented today on Writer's Almanac (MPR)

selected and read at Public Radio program - Garrison Keillor -

Toward the Winter Solstice by Timothy Steele
Although the roof is just a story high,


It dizzies me a little to look down.


I lariat-twirl the rope of Christmas lights


And cast it to the weeping birch's crown;


A dowel into which I've screwed a hook


Enables me to reach, lift, drape, and twine


The cord among the boughs so that the bulbs


Will accent the tree's elegant design.






Friends, passing home from work or shopping, pause


And call up commendations or critiques.


I make adjustments. Though a potpourri


Of Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Jews, and Sikhs,


We all are conscious of the time of year;


We all enjoy its colorful displays


And keep some festival that mitigates


The dwindling warmth and compass of the days.






Some say that L.A. doesn't suit the Yule,


But UPS vans now like magi make


Their present-laden rounds, while fallen leaves


Are gaily resurrected in their wake;


The desert lifts a full moon from the east


And issues a dry Santa Ana breeze,


And valets at chic restaurants will soon


Be tending flocks of cars and SUV's.






And as the neighborhoods sink into dusk


The fan palms scattered all across town stand


More calmly prominent, and this place seems


A vast oasis in the Holy Land.


This house might be a caravansary,


The tree a kind of cordial fountainhead


Of welcome, looped and decked with necklaces


And ceintures of green, yellow , blue, and red.






Some wonder if the star of Bethlehem


Occurred when Jupiter and Saturn crossed;


It's comforting to look up from this roof


And feel that, while all changes, nothing's lost,


To recollect that in antiquity


The winter solstice fell in Capricorn


And that, in the Orion Nebula,


From swirling gas, new stars are being born.


"Toward the Winter Solstice" by Timothy Steele, from Toward the Winter Solstice. (c) Swallow Press, 2005. Reprinted with permission.