“IF WE DON’T TURN THE WHEEL, IT WILL NOT TURN”
Our ancestors in their simplicity,
we hear, believed the spent midwinter sun
would die at last and never rise again
without their rites—so every turning of
the seasons had its keeping and its forms,
and failure in them meant the end of all.
“Now we know better”—or do we know less?
In the pattern’s loss, what have we gained?
The days we set aside to mourn the sun
or drive the cattle through the fires or bless
the fields joined our spirits, bodies, minds
to the moving heart of all. We did not turn
the earth upon its axis—what we turned,
and still might turn, was purely our own souls.
(by Kathryn Hinds)
Our ancestors in their simplicity,
we hear, believed the spent midwinter sun
would die at last and never rise again
without their rites—so every turning of
the seasons had its keeping and its forms,
and failure in them meant the end of all.
“Now we know better”—or do we know less?
In the pattern’s loss, what have we gained?
The days we set aside to mourn the sun
or drive the cattle through the fires or bless
the fields joined our spirits, bodies, minds
to the moving heart of all. We did not turn
the earth upon its axis—what we turned,
and still might turn, was purely our own souls.
(by Kathryn Hinds)
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