18

Twelfth Moon, Fifteenth Night


Be done, be done, the watch

                               drum urges.

Slow, so slowly, sounds

                               of man are gone.

Blow out the light, watch

                               the window brighten.

The moon shines, the whole sky

                               snow.


— Yuan Mei, translated by JP Seaton, from I Don't Bow to Buddhas: Selected Poems of Yuan Mei, Copper Canyon Press


Thank you for calling The Botanarchy Hotline. The Botanarchy Hotline is medicine disguised as a poem, delivered through the portal of your phone. It’s a ham-radio séance between you and the living Earth, for those ready to be bewildered back to life.

The transmission at the end of your telephone line is Episode 18: Blow Out The Light, Watch The Window Brighten. It’s the Winter Solstice, the night when darkness has said all it needs to say, and tonight on the hotline we’re broadcasting from the hinge where yin peaks, yang is reborn, and the whole world pauses -- just for a breath -- between what has been and what will be. This one’s a vigil. A Taoist-style tenebrae. No rush, no blaze, just keeping company with the dark long enough to notice where the light begins to find its way back.

In the Taoist calendar, the Winter Solstice -- Dōngzhì -- isn’t just a date on the page. 

It’s a hinge in time.

A night our ancestors kept vigil. 

Yin has reached its full expression -- darkness poured to the edge -- with the world’s energy resting in roots, marrow, and underground rivers of memory. But this is also the moment when yang is secretly reborn. Deep inside the black-blue belly of the year, a spark of light turns over in its sleep and begins its long, slow ascent toward spring.