Solstice stories
this June day
Dear friends,
A very happy solstice to you — whether you’re experiencing the longest night in the southern equator, the longest day in the northern, or the equatorial solstice noonday when shadows are almost completely gathered at the base of the standing one.
We can start our reflection with a gorgeous quatrain from Ursula K. Le Guin, written from the depth of the longest night:
On the longest night of all the year in the forests up the hill, the little owl spoke soft and clear to bid the night be longer still.
(This is one of six quatrains from Le Guin, you can read all six here, as well as find them in her book So Far, So Good.)
A Faroese friend told me he loved the summer nights because you could play soccer all night long. For years — living in Belfast, when summer season would bring riots and contentious marches — I dreaded summer and looked forward to the early evenings of wintertide. This was a marked change from growing up, where I loved the late evenings, light lingering in the sky till after 11 p.m. On nights when my parents were away, I’d stay up late talking to friends and playing the guitar — I remember the summer of 1992, watching the first light start in the sky at 3.30 a.m.
Stephen Kuusisto, who spent a few years in Finland in the late 1950s when he was only a child, has a poem that imagines rural Finnish summers in the 1910s:
The dancers come, dressed like rainbows (if rainbows could be spun), and linking hands they turn to the melancholy fiddles. A red bird spreads its wings now and in the darker days to come.
(You can read the full poem “Summer at North Farm” at the Poetry Foundation and in Stephen Kuusisto’s book Only Bread, Only Light, published by Copper Canyon Press.)
In that same book, Stephen, who is blind, writes: “I see like a person who looks through a kaleidoscope, my impressions of the world are at once beautiful and largely useless.” What is light, then, when perception is altered? It is just as powerful: warmth on skin, vitamins straight from the sun, volume, sound bending upward not downward, a sense of stretching and embracing time, and the weight of expectation in the air.
In Ancient Egypt, the summer solstice occurred close to the annual flooding of the Nile, so it is a season of fertility, and — from the Sphinx’s vantage point— the solstice sunset occurs exactly between two pyramids. In Peru, the June solstice marked a time of anticipation of a good harvest, honouring the Sun God who was to rise later in the year. On the Hill of Tara, in Ireland, a fire was lit on the night of the summer solstice. Why light fire at the end of the longest day? Why not. For life, for fertility, for growth and green and goodness, for scaring away death, for entering the good night with generosity.
Friends, what is a solstice story that you have? Bring us to the sounds and scents and senses of your longest days and their evenings.
P.S. Friends, an audiobook version of 44 Poems on Being with Each Other: a Poetry Unbound Collection is on sale now for 70% off until June 29. You can buy it here.
Poetry in the World
A list of my events: Online and in the U.S. (Santa Fe, NM; Frenchtown, NJ; Hickory, NC) , Scotland (Iona), and England (Kettering)
June 27–July 3, Iona, Scotland
Krista and I will be leading a week of conversation (with some musical guests) on Iona, an island off an island off the west coast of Scotland. It is filled, but if you want to be on the wait list, you can email the Saint Columba hotel by clicking on the title just above here. (For more info, click on the date heading.)
August 9–13, Santa Fe, New Mexico
I’m leading a four-day intensive workshop at Modern Elder Academy called “Poetry as a Common Language”. We’ll read, write, and discuss poems on finding and deepening connection. (For more information, click on the date heading.)
August 27-30, Kettering, England
I’m absolutely delighted to be returning to this year’s Greenbelt Festival, a gathering of arts, activism, and belief in England, beginning. (For registration info, click on the date heading.)
I’ll be leading evening worship alongside Nadia Bolz-Weber and Doug Gay as part of the Festival of Preaching, beginning at 5:30 p.m. (For registration info, click on the date heading.)
October 1, Frenchtown, New Jersey
Find me at the Frenchtown Bookshop for a reading, Q&A, and book signing, beginning at 6:30 p.m. (For more info, click on the date heading.)
October 11, Hickory, North Carolina
I’ll be giving a special reading with The Center for Creative and Compassionate Communities at Lenoir-Rhyne University’s Grace Chapel, beginning at 3 p.m.; tickets will be available soon. (For more info, click on the date heading.)
I’ll be leading a virtual craft intensive on poetry and desire through Poets House, beginning at 6 p.m. ET. (For more info, click on the date heading.)
Hello and happy solstice, friends, and thank you, Pádraig, for this luminous prompt on this luminous day.
I cannot recall one specific summer solstice, but what the word conjures is the summertime freedom of youth, a day long enough to contain everything: swimming in the sea, laughter, worries left at the shore, a perfect book, rosé, and the all-encompassing lust of summer. And then, when the day had given all it had, a campfire crackling under an endless canopy of stars, a guitar, friends lying back scanning the sky for shooting stars, young love burning as brightly as the flames. As brightly as those stars. The night so wide and generous it felt like it would never close. Wishing you all a day long enough to contain everything.
It was late afternoon, early evening.
My wife was mending our trampoline.
My sons were playing backyard soccer.
I was collecting tree clippings into our green bin.
And we were like, "Shouldn't it be darker by now?"