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Yesterday heralded in
the Winter Solstice – the first day of winter, the shortest day, and the
longest night of the year.  It is a
day celebrated all over the world in many different ways.

 

In ancient times, Winter
Solstice festivals were the last celebrations held before the deep, hard winter
began. There was plenty of food and wine, for now, – and hopes that all would
survive the coming famine months until spring arrived again.

It seems only
fitting that we spend a few moments at this time of year in quiet reflection in
the cemetery.  As the snow falls
silently around us, our thoughts turn to life and death, to the past and the
future, to what we’ve lost and what we’ve gained.  These poems seem to sum up those sentiments especially well.

In Beechwood Cemetery

Here the dead sleep –
the quiet dead.  No sound

Disturbs them ever, and
no storm dismays.

Winter mid snow caresses
the tired ground,

And the wind roars about
the woodland ways.

Springtime and summer
and red autumn pass,

With leaf and bloom and
pipe of wind and bird,

By them unfelt, unheeded
and unheard.

Our centuries to them
are but as strokes

In the dim gaunt of some
far-off chime.

Unaltering rest their
perfect being cloaks 

A thing too vast to hear
or feel or see Children of Silence and
Eternity,

They know no season but
the end of time.

                                    ~
Archibald Lampman

An Old Cemetery

The mists swirl, the
moon shines bright.

No one dares stray here.

They would never desire
to,

Unless the earth covers
what they hold dear.

Bodies sleep
subconsciously

In the presence of their
God,

Singing silent songs
that decompose,

Under the wild earth
their restless souls trod.

The headstones stand
pale and somber,

Reflecting the white
aurora’s glow.

Memories play like broken
records,

Trapped inside, echoing
lethargic tones.

The world’s slow spin
cradles them to sleep.

Heavy eyelids come to
rise no more.

A thousand sunsets
dwindle and pass

Lives that mortality
ripped and tore.

                                    ~
Jana Rininger

This poem was written by
a teenage author, only identified as swoopingpigeons from New York at http://www.teenink.com/poetry

Snow on Cemetery Stones

I watch as nature masks
herself In flakes of snow that
leap, from heights

They fall in endless
tandem

Hiding her unveiled
cruelty.

In winter’s months when
all is bare,

No flowers to distract
looking eyes,

We see the gravestones
wearing away

And the remainder of
unfinished good-byes,

We see nature’s curse
and her destruction

In the words once
legible.

‘Will’ who preferred
‘William’

Is now ‘Wil’ with one
‘L’ left alive.

And what of the rest of
us

Who walk the world
still,

Will she shroud our
names in supposed beauty,

And leave all that we
are

To become all that we
once were.

                                    ~
swoopingpigeons

And one of my winter favorites!  Although not written
about a cemetery, the woods also offer that forlorn feeling of the unexpected
and the unfinished.

Stopping By Woods on
a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I
think I know.

His house is in the
village though;

He will not see me
stopping here

To watch his woods fill
up with snow.

My little horse must
think it queer

To stop without a
farmhouse near

Between the woods and
frozen lake

The darkest evening of
the year.

He gives his harness
bells a shake

To ask if there is some
mistake.

The only other sound’s
the sweep

Of easy wind and downy
flake.

The woods are lovely,
dark and deep.

But I have promises to
keep,

And miles to go before I
sleep,

And miles to go before I
sleep.

                           ~
Robert Frost

And now the season is at a
close – Happy Holidays to you and yours!!

~ Joy