Our myths turn long nights into evergreen cut on grocery store parking lots,
a continent away from thousands of reindeer starving as the Arctic ice dissolves.
Only one star guides the way out to where striped lines follow
diesels lit like Christmas — miles of commerce threading the Mojave.
The longest night spills from a cup of tears I drink through this highway
that weaves between monoliths of an American Stonehenge
propped along the Virgin River’s winding course.
I see her face in the rock at the hour’s cusp —
Freya carrying the sun in her antlers.
She treks the sky, a spinning wheel around our breath,
and seeds the earth on the darkest night with bits of amber.
The sun stands still at dawn on a plateau of Kaibab sediment,
reaches down into gypsum layers, then sandstone pockets to greet
bighorn sheep near river banks who step out of shadow for the new year.
Danielle Beazer Dubrasky, author of 2021’s “Drift Migration,” directs the Grace A. Tanner Center for Human Values at Southern Utah University.
This story appears in the December 2024 issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.