It was a chilly day yesterday in the Valley of the Sun. There I was, at the Superstition Springs driving range, working on my game for the better part of two hours, and it all felt so strange. A chill wind blowing across a near-deserted driving range (although my instructor Alex Black was there to offer a cheerful hello as he loaded up balls for his next lesson). The sun angle all wrong, low and harsh on the western horizon. Long shadows that seemed so out of place at a place I’m so used to sweating my brains out at.

I long once more for the heat. I long once more for the sun.

But it’s December, and even here in the Valley of the Sun the days grow ever short. The pool has fallen below 60, the new palms and plantings from September are still hanging in there. Today we’ll put up our Christmas tree, but the house won’t match in lights what most folks around us are doing. I had a dream last night that I was measuring the house for outside lights, so maybe that’s something that will happen next year. Not this year, though – no money.

This is a great poem, I love the imagery. I hope you will too.

“Now the corn mazes truly are frightening;
bedraggled hulking husks of a sinister thinness,
looming and swaying over the tamped-down paths
littered with their fallen hides —
ochre’d in the early winter darkness,
they rustle at the unsympathetic winds,
conspiratorial whispers
interwoven with the harsh hiss of the season.

What child now dares lose themselves
among these rasping ghouls, whose shrouds
come peeling off in leprous strips? What child now
dares enter this maze of death? What child? None!
For what they truly seek is not a fright,
but to be startled by delight.”
– Christopher Watkins, December Sonnet

Hat tip: egreenway.com