All My Life, I Worshipped the Sun
All my life, I have worshipped the sun.
The dawning sun, breathing life into my footfalls, allowing us to escape the dark.
The peering sun, trickling through the trees – not quite enough to truly thaw the frozen ground, but warm enough so that we might not freeze.
The midday sun: a beaming kiss that I can feel touching my skin, freeing us to roam, to forage and scavenge; to live, and not just to survive.
The imprisoned sun, for which I wait and for which I pray for a swift return; caught, clinging to life and limb, as the cold leeches and worms its way in.
The banished sun; though its warmth cannot reach us in the grey months of winter, I worship the mellowed light as a promise of return.
The afternoon sun, a final warning to run, before there is no warmth left to banish the ever-reaching cold.
The darkening sun, falling towards the earth as I too step back into darkness.
My entire life, I have worshipped the sun. I have cursed the rains, the clouds and the cold; I have waited out winters in darkness, envied the birds that might follow the light.
I did not know the night.
The sun had betrayed me, vanishing more swiftly behind the horizon than ever before.
I had lingered too long in the world above-ground, and would now pay the price, a hasty shelter not enough to keep out the cold.
Without light, without warmth, I would die in darkness, another frozen waste.
I did not know the moon; did not know how she stole the colour from the world, rendering the familiar new and wonderous.
Lovely, deathly, too cold to save me, but with enough glowing light to allow me to save myself.
I ran, to home, to hearth, from semi-dark to dark, without the sun, my protector, to guide me.
All my life, I worshipped the sun. For warmth, for life, for liberty.
These days, I also linger, in her darkening rays, on the doorway between life and death, to greet the moon, and thank her.
