“At Day’s Close”

“With the decline in magical beliefs, night time for most urban households became less menacing. Like the natural world generally, darkness lost most of its aura of terror and mystery. Formerly a source of fear within educated circles, night even became, for some observers, an object of awe and admiration. The very air at night, once thought perilous, now appeared sweet and refreshing. Celestial spectacles such as comets inspired rapture rather than dread, as unprecedented numbers delighted in using telescopes.Artists, travelers, and poets all celebrated night’s beauty and grandeur. Visiting the Continent in 1787, a London bookseller exulted, ‘The evening was still & tranquil & the sky perfectly serene, enriched with millions of stars shining in perfect beauty.’ Similarly, a traveler in France opined, ‘Nothing could be more delightful than this journey by moonlight, in a serene night.'”

– A. Rogers Ekirch

Riverbend Regional Park, Virginia (2012)

All was quiet on New Year’s Day.

Wolfmonath

“January is the open gate of the year, shut until the shortest day passed, but now open to let in the lengthening daylight, which will soon fall upon dim patches of pale green that show where spring is still sleeping.

The month takes its name from the Roman god Janus, guardian of doorways and bridges. Janus had two faces looking in opposite directions – one back towards the old year, one forward towards the new. Although the shortest day is past and gone, January is a dark month in Northern Europe. The nights are still long and the weather often feels as if there is very little daylight at all. Once New year celebrations are over, it is time to return to work.

Gone are the days when the festive season lasted for the full twelve days of Christmas. The Anglo-Saxons called January ‘Wolfmonath’ because it was considered a time when these ravening beasts were more likely to take human prey.”

January 1, 2022

“Let other mornings honor the miraculous.
Eternity has festivals enough.
This is the feast of our mortality,
The most mundane and human holiday.

On other days we misinterpret time,
Pretending that we live the present moment.
But can this blur, this smudgy in-between,
This tiny fissure where the future dripsInto the past, this flyspeck we call now
Be our true habitat?

The present is
The leaky palm of water that we skim
From the swift, silent river slipping by.
The new year always brings us what we want
Simply by bringing us along—to see
A calendar with every day uncrossed,
A field of snow without a single footprint.”

“New Year’s” – Dana Gioia