Celebrating Summer Solstice 2020

It is the longest day of the year, the first official day of summer on the modern calendar. In a couple of hours, my three friends will join me in a summer solstice celebration. We will have a bonfire behind my house, share some readings, reminisce, and enjoy each other’s company as we have for many summer solstices. We all agree that the most memorable summer solstice was during our trip to Ireland in 2017 when visited Ballyvaughan small town in county Claire on the W. coast of Ireland. There we gathered with the locals in their church with a rousing celebration of songs and readings, a memory that still resounds within me to this day.

The Summer Solstice is when the earth is tilted closest to the sun during its orbit, Midsummer, as it is referred to in the northern climes, the inspiration for Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream when magical things can happen..

I was looking for a reading for tonight when I wrote this poem.

Poem for Summer Solstice

I sought the perfect poem

for this longest day

It was a Goldilocks affair-

this poem too flowery

this poem- what does this one have to do

with Summer Solstice?

None were right

I cannot wear the words of these authors

comfortably

So I must write my own poem

of what the Summer Solstice means to me

that for millennia all across the earth

people, myself among them

celebrate the day when the sun is king

where light exposes the shadows of

dark places, inspires my garden to grow

the flowers to explode with color

to bear fruit, wither to seed

to regenerate in the next year

This, the longest day is born by truth

not of political or religious making

Our ancestors and our ancestor’s ancestors

reveled that the sun is our constant

It will rise and set each day no matter what

and we will spin our lives around it as we orbit

day after day

year after year

century after century

holding each other

in its embrace

Illustration by the author, photo courtesy Pexels

Alanna also blogs at One Sweet Earth