Winter Solstice by Ronald Moran

Only if one insists on interpreting day
                    as light
is this the shortest day of the year,
                    a misnomer

at best––at worst, a cause to admit
                    the bleakness
of one's life, as mirrored in the absence
                    of light,

as if clouds obtained, their low-lying
                    legions
parading, so as to honor one's general
                    affirmation

of the law of correspondences, used
                    too often
to justify the slow but nonetheless sad
                    drop

into darkness, when one can say today,
                    at least,
O yes. It must be in the stars, or, rather,
                    their absence.



Ronald Moran lives in Simpsonville, South Carolina. His poems have been published in Commonweal, Connecticut Poetry Review, Louisiana Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Negative Capability, North American Review, Northwest Review, South Carolina Review, Southern Review, Tar River Poetry, The Wallace Stevens Journal, and in twelve books/chapbooks of poetry. Clemson University Press will publish his Eye of the World shortly. He has won a number of awards and his work is archived in Special Collections at Furman University.