Wednesday, June 19, 2019

The Lengthening Day

Solstice sunrise from Glastonbury Tor, Somerset, U.K.
(Photo by Sarah Little-Knitwitz via EarthSky.org)


A sticking snow slowed us in the dawn

of the higher latitudes, our shadows shifting

as the sun swept low over bare trees,

the day's lone music from the valley trains,

the steel stove ticking, dividing the hours

with firewood and ash, no one in sight

but the wind, the tall white furious wind,

weather and stars passing through

again and again.


Warmed by coffee in a china cup,

we waited at the window,

souls swarmed through us

as the wind died, and we heard,

when the night became glass,

the wild cries of swans in flight,

moonlight and cycles and time,

waiting to hear the rain in new leaves,

the wind in the great green crowns,

that music and swaying,


Regaining peace one vision at a time,

deer with the mist on their shoulders

coming to drink from the spring,

the sun going down big and red

behind wooded hills, all the little hoofprints

in the mud at our feet, our work finished,

our thoughts free to run, grateful to have held

each other for awhile, content in the longer light,

calmed by the big red sun, adrift

with the fireflies that constellate the night.







—A compaction of poems from solstice to solstice, 12/22/18 to 6/20/19.