The Shortest Day

To read aloud each year on this day. Wishing a joyful season to you and to all your dear ones. Thank you, Susan Cooper.

So the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow‐white world Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees; They hung their homes with evergreen; They burned beseeching fires all night long To keep the year alive.
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them Echoing behind us ‐ listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight, This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land: They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends, And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now, This year, and every year.
Welcome Yule!

—Susan Cooper

Celebration Calendar for 2024

Dear all, here is my Each Day Is a Celebration calendar for 2024, this time a series of paintings (oil on linen) reflecting the seasons of the year through still-life, landscape, and architecture. Please contact me (eachdayisacelebration@gmail.com) if you prefer to pick up a calendar rather than have it shipped.

Hymn to the Morning

For September 1, the opening lines of a poem by Phillis Wheatley (emancipated from slavery in 1774).

Attend my lays, ye ever honour’d nine,
Assist my labours, and my strains refine;
In smoothest numbers pour the notes along,
For bright Aurora now demands my song.
Aurora hail, and all the thousand dies,
Which deck thy progress through the vaulted skies:
The morn awakes, and wide extends her rays…

For the rest of this poem, please see An Hymn to Phillis.

Memory of Venice/Valentines Day

For this day, a painting, and a poem by Philip Booth.

Nightsong

Beside you,

lying down at dark,

my waking fits your sleep.

Your turning

flares the slow-banked fire

between our mingled feet,

and there,

curved close and warm

against the nape of love,

held there,

who holds your dreaming

shape, I match my breathing

to your breath;

and sightless, keep my hand

on your heart’s breast, keep

nightwatch

on your sleep to prove

there is no dark, nor death.

—Philip Booth

Chanson d’automne

For the first day of fall, a poem by Paul Verlaine. Translation by Arthur Symons.

Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l’automne
Blessent mon coeur
D’une langueur
Monotone.

Tout suffocant
Et blême, quand
Sonne l’heure,
Je me souviens
Des jours anciens
Et je pleure

Et je m’en vais
Au vent mauvais
Qui m’emporte
Deçà, delà,
Pareil à la
Feuille morte.

—Paul Verlaine (1844-1896)

When a sighing begins
In the violins
Of the autumn-song,
My heart is drowned
In the slow sound
Languorous and long

Pale as with pain,
Breath fails me when
The hours tolls deep.
My thoughts recover
The days that are over
And I weep.

And I go
Where the winds know,
Broken and brief,
To and fro,
As the winds blow
A dead leaf.

Cards!

Because there won’t be any in-person holiday bazaar for my cards this year, my website is updated (thank you Devin!) to do everything online. Please check it out, along with some new cards. I hope you like it. (Below, some discount codes.)

If you decide to order as many as 5 or 10, you may use the code 5FOR20 or 10FOR40 for a discount. If you are nearby and prefer a safely socially-distant pickup, use code PICKUP for no shipping, and contact me to make arrangements. 

When Autumn Came

A painting and a poem for the autumn equinox.

This is the way that autumn came to the trees:

it stripped them down to the skin,

left their ebony bodies naked.

It shook out their hearts, the yellow leaves,

scattered them over the ground.

Anyone could trample them out of shape

undisturbed by a single moan of protest.

The birds that herald dreams

were exiled from their song,

each voice torn out of its throat.

They dropped into the dust

even before the hunter strung his bow.

Oh, God of May have mercy.

Bless these withered bodies

with the passion of your resurrection;

make their dead veins flow with blood again.

Give some tree the gift of green again.

Let one bird sing.

—Faiz Ahmed Faiz 1911-1984