Mused - the BellaOnline Literary Review - Winter Solstice 2015

Few things in life are straight up-and-down. Our Earth tilted toward the sun makes summer; away makes winter. But did you know orbit-wise we’re actually closest to the sun on January 4th? So the poor Aussies get a hotter summer with their double-whammy. The exact moment that the tilt gets most extreme, which in 2015 is Tue, Dec 22nd at 4:49am, is one thing, but that closest-point ups the ante. For us Northerners we get a warmish darkest, shortest day. The Southerners are broiling in the close heat of their longest. Our Mused entries help us explore this multi-layered, overlapping-rippled world we live in. In poetry, a beloved friend can be five, ten, twenty, or sixty. Fiction entries explore divorce through the eyes of a young girl and a ground-down artist. Non-fiction. A young woman in 1931 moves to the big city and is swept away in the love of a lifetime. And then we have images which can speak a thousand words. Mark Berkerey turns Aussie insects into miniature works of art.