Winter Solstice—Farewell to Adolescence

“A battle lost or won is easily described, understood, and appreciated, but the moral growth of a great nation requires reflection, as well as observation, to appreciate it.”                                                                                                      —Frederick Douglass

 “If you come to a fork in the road, take it.”  —Yogi Berra

As the year winds down we turn the page on the 21^st Century’s teen years. The nascent century is about to leave adolescence, a time of transition from youth to maturity, as we come of age and enter the 20’s.

In a sense we are the 21^st Century’s parents—still trying to figure out how to nurture this budding entity and guide it on the path to do what’s right—establish moral values, embrace empathy, and ensure that its future will offer equality and justice for all.

If we fail as parents and our progeny aren't able to shake this current decline, we will have set the course of history on a tailspin that will take years to recover.

The moral compass of the country is wavering. Is the Earth’s magnetic field strong enough to right the course—or will the potential energy wane and spin out of control? 

As we celebrate the last winter solstice of the "teen years," let us take the time and effort to challenge destiny, take heed of our moral compass, and navigate this fork in the road.

Midlife 

by Jeff Key     

From inside out the core stretches upward, reaching for the sky—expecting to become what it wasn’t yesterday.

A new shoot blanketed with monochrome aspirations,

explores foreign territory—its first bud cut short by a recalcitrant winter.

Rust-colored leaves descend in a vacillating free fall, twisting and craning for one last look at the stem that held them in its grasp, bound by memories, 

lost in a stream defined by ambiguous currents.

Each tick refines a stone, cut and shaped under the guise of an unconscious tremor, rippling with indifference, buried, resuscitated and then discarded.

Translucent skin bends and folds with a starboard slant—yawing on an uncharted course, calling for a return to moist mornings filled with desire and an urgent call to forget.

Creased sheets wrap tentative limbs, swaddled with fury, caught in the glint of an innocent eye. 

The howling night repeats a mournful dirge for the neglected offspring of the summer wind, born with heat on their lips and a short-sighted glance at the future pounding in their ears.

A finger, throbbing with neuralgia, strains to make marks on a blank page

pocked with frayed holes that bore inward with the breath of a twice told tale—

unfinished but filled with promise.