“It’s time for the magic to come out of things,”
she said in reference to Christmas things.
Did she mean go away or show its stuff?
“It’s time to enter the mystery of things,”

she said in reference to eternal things.
Magic/mystery/mystery/magic. What isn’t
a mystery? But magic? Conjuring illusion?
Way too much of that going on. Maybe she

meant that magic should go away while my-
stery is here to stay and that we should enter
with anticipation of exit. It’s the winter solstice;
it will grow dark quickly and the dark will last

longer than any other day of the year. We will
enter the mystery of the darkness to ponder
and wait just as they did at Stonehenge
for the returning, mysterious glimmer of light

— the marvelously mysterious eternal nature of nature.