It’s Alban Hefin!

That’s what Druids call Summer Solstice, which occurs in our neck of the woods at 3:50 pm today. The persistent rainy days we’ve been experiencing, broken by cloudy days with less rain, make it hard to accept that this is the time of maximum light. We are about to enter the waning half of the year, as we in the Northern Hemisphere do every year after Alban Hefin. South of the equator, our wane is their gain.

magical summer sunrise in June

Photo by J. Harrington

I have discovered that an excess of books to read, coffee to drink, munchies to snack on and great company [Better Half and two dogs] to share the days with are insufficient respite to those of us who experience seasonal affective disorder during the shorter days of winter. Lack of sunlight in June isn’t much different than lack of sunlight in December or January, except that, so far, I’ve not had to shovel the precipitation.

I’m adjusting my focus to concentrating on surviving this dreary spell in hope and expectation that thriving may well follow, but not without survival. Meanwhile, the Better Half and Daughter Person are checking out several local riding instructors and stables. I’m starting to make a dent in (re)organizing my stacks of books into something more coherent. When the rains abate, I’ll be off to a local trout stream in an effort to thrive. Meanwhile, it looks like this isn’t going to be the year I try planting a three sisters garden. As Minnesota’s sports fans get to say all too often, “Maybe next year!!” In today’s poem, the late Jim Harrison has nicely captured the times we’re living in.

Solstice Litany

By Jim Harrison

      1

The Saturday morning meadowlark

came in from high up

with her song gliding into tall grass

still singing. How I'd like

to glide around singing in the summer

then to go south to where I already was

and find fields full of meadowlarks

in winter. But when walking my dog

I want four legs to keep up with her

as she thunders down the hill at top speed

then belly flops into the deep pond.

Lark or dog I crave the impossible.

I'm just human. All too human.

      2

I was nineteen and mentally

infirm when I saw the prophet Isaiah.

The hem of his robe was as wide

as the horizon and his trunk and face

were thousands of feet up in the air.

Maybe he appeared because I had read him

so much and opened too many ancient doors.

I was cooking my life in a cracked clay

pot that was leaking. I had found

secrets I didn't deserve to know.

When the battle for the mind is finally

over it's late June, green and raining.

      3

A violent windstorm the night before

the solstice. The house creaked and yawned.

I thought the morning might bring a bald earth,

bald as a man's bald head but not shiny.

But dawn was fine with a few downed trees,

the yellow rosebush splendidly intact.

The grass was all there dotted with Black

Angus cattle. The grass is indestructible

except to fire but now it's too green to burn.

What did the cattle do in this storm?

They stood with their butts toward the wind,

erect Buddhists waiting for nothing in particular.

I was in bed cringing at gusts,

imagining the contents of earth all blowing

north and piled up where the wind stopped,

the pile sky-high. No one can climb it.

A gopher comes out of a hole as if nothing happened.

 

      4

The sun should be a couple of million miles

closer today. It wouldn't hurt anything

and anyway this cold rainy June is hard

on me and the nesting birds. My own nest

is stupidly uncomfortable, the chair

of many years. The old windows don't keep

the weather out, the wet wind whipping

my hair. A very old robin drops dead

on the lawn, a first for me. Millions

of birds die but we never see it—they like

privacy in this holy, fatal moment or so

I think. We can't tell each other when we die.

Others must carry the message to and fro.

"He's gone," they'll say. While writing an average poem

destined to disappear among the millions of poems

written now by mortally average poets.

      5

Solstice at the cabin deep in the forest.

The full moon shines in the river, there are pale

green northern lights. A huge thunderstorm

comes slowly from the west. Lightning strikes

a nearby tamarack bursting into flame.

I go into the cabin feeling unworthy.

At dawn the tree is still smoldering

in this place the gods touched earth.

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