Marking the Equinox / Equinox
Don Hynes
Marking the Equinox
There is a saddle of sharply outlined peaks
silhouetting the northern Cascades,
seen from our tiny island in the Salish Sea.
On the autumnal equinox the sun rises
on the southern edge of this saddle
cresting the horizon, marking east
as surely as Polaris sits north.
Ancient civilizations built massive temples,
pyramids and monuments of enormous scale
to record the seasonal positions of the sun.
Modern civilization is beyond this primitivism;
we build vertical towers to honor finance
in violent and unsustainable cities;
construct weapons of war,
technologies for mass destruction
and replica toys to train our children in the art.
We poison the Earth with pesticides and fertilizers,
strip the seas of fish and every signature species,
choke the rivers with agricultural waste.
Nuclear detritus festers without remedy
yet more and more is produced for electrical power;
a brown cloud of noxious gas circles the planet,
debilitating minerals foul our drinking water
and contaminate our very DNA;
pages and volumes are written
on the death of forests, the erosion of top soils
but awareness doesn’t make the slightest dent
in our illusory images of progress and advance.
The ancient peoples made similar mistakes,
their errors hidden below layers of sand
and the bottom of the deepest seas.
Perhaps their monuments to the sun
were the last of their enterprise,
their messages symbols of reverence
and warning to those who would follow
of a higher order ignored at our peril.
Equinox
The day of balance comes twice each year,
east and west, day and night
poised like a ballerina on pointed toes,
one arm high, one hand curled to the breast
as if ready to release the heart.
On this day of equanimity
I call to the Earth with yearning
and open my vessel of feeling:
let light and dark dance my way
with the grace of a Russian prima
soaring aloft in the steady hands
of a man devoted to beauty.
Don Hynes