A Solstice Reflection

My stab at the impression of late dusk with snow on the water, and a night passage ahead.

Sailor's Carol

Words by Charles Causley

Music & Arrangement by Gordon Bok

Lord, the snowful sky / In this pale December

Fingers my clear eye / Lest seeing I remember

Not the naked baby / Weeping in the stable

Nor the singing boys / All round my table.

Not the dizzy star / Bursting on the pane

Nor the leopard sun / Pawing the rain

Only the deep garden / Where green lillies grow

And the sailors rolling / In the sea's blue snow.

Sailor's CaroGordon Bok's Version of Sailor's Carol

(Sorry, it's a pop-up with ads, and it'll roll into other songs if you don't close/stop it...

I'm still learning how to drive this thing!)

A Solstice Reflection

There are few things on this wide planet so fulsome with awe as winter dusk coming down hard at sea under a press of snow.

It's a time to draw our selves together. Batten our hatches and stoke our fires against the coming night. The loon's cry never sounded so beautiful, as winging across darkling water. Never the light so gorgeous as when it fades away.

I'm not worried. The mere fact of a night passage no longer taunts me with fear of the dark. Night sailing in inshore waters has its own tricks and techniques (I'll write about these, another time). Play it safe, work your vessel from point to point, keep your focus and you'll do fine.

And yet. And yet. Winter nights are long. The eye strains after what it cannot see. The mind, working hard to cast meager perception as coherent picture, may lapse into a moment's misorientation, brief but shaking. When snow wraps us close about... when wind and water, compass and lead are our only clues, save only the sometime alarum of breakers. When Darkness and Death - those ancient companions - lean on your shoulder, whispering mutiny. It helps to have something to take the mind in hand; to lead it in calming circles when it wants to fret and shy.

Sailor's Carol is one of my favorites. Couldn't quite say what it means. All my favorite poems seem a little inscrutable to me; brimful of vivid imagery, dark and diffuse as dream. But Gordon Bok's rendition is perfect for singing, over and over in that awe-full black of snow and cold, on a night crowded with mortal reflection. On this, the longest night of the year.

I pass it to you in hopes that it pleases and comforts.

Happy Solstice, and a fair Yuletide to you, and all who sail upon her!