An advent calendar of poetry: December 21 | The Coast Halifax

An advent calendar of poetry: December 21

Halifax poet laureate Sue Goyette delivers her final daily poem on the Winter Solstice.

Editor's Note: Each day from December 1 -21, Halifax' poet laureate Sue Goyette will write a new poem to share with the city on The Coast's website and social media. "If I need this, I bet other people need this," she told us on day one—and we think she's right. In a year that's felt like a months-long dusk, this will be some light we can carry forward, together, until the days begin to grow again.
Here is her final poem:

Light is so condensed on this shortest day, it’s a honeyed version of itself. And if a single bee can visit up to 5000 flowers, this day is 3,695 flowers long. Flowers are verbs. Like us. And, Sugar Fuses, we are on the move. Jupiter and Saturn, conducting the Great Galactic Refresh, are conjoining so close they will spark a porch light for the mourning cave we are in. "To be of the leap," René Char wrote one night, "not to be of the feast, its epilogue." This leap is the work of imagining a way forward so there’s a bowl for everyone. Our hearts have known this all along. What can this feeling be but awe at how our feet are ahead of us, making a new path, a desire line to this knowing? Ballooning is a behaviour spiders use to navigate the in between to the next. To be on the move and of the leap. This is why we’re here. Together and apart. They release gossamer threads and are at the mercy of air currents and electric fields. And this is where we leave each other, at the mercy. I’ll meet you at the feast.