@LittleFelinePress features a poem about solstices, "Sun Standing Still". Whether you live in the northern or southern hemisphere, last Thursday you would either have experienced the longest day and shortest night, or the shortest day and the longest night. Depending on where you live, the amount of daylight will either increase or decrease over the next six months, until the cycle turns again. A solstice is one event that every person on the planet has. It is a common experience, one of the few things that we all share in alike, regardless of any other consideration.
One other aspect of the solstice is noted in "Sun Standing Still". For about three days after the solstice, the sun rises and sets at about the same time. Only afterwards do sunrise and sunset times begin to change. In this way, the solstice is a liminal space between the worlds of light and darkness. Therefore, Phil wrote a poem that reflected both the changes that the solstice brings, changes which speak to the constant change of human life from birth, through infancy to adulthood and eventually to death. At the same time, the regularity and predictability of the solstice is a promise of continuity at the world's core, even as so much is unpredictable and uncertain in our present age. Humanity's power is great but it cannot alter the steady progression of time.
SUN STANDING STILL
Three days at midsummer;
day and night poised unchanged,
balanced on this edge.
When light declines,
darkness rises, claiming its turn
wheeling like prey birds circling
on thermals above high cliffs
who can stay aloft even
as sunny skies turn gray;
distant thunder rumbling clouds
holding time, space, memory.
What’s behind a path upon
which I cannot return. Ahead
black skies of uncertainty;
unexpected gap, sun appears again.
Here are days I was made for;
nature’s unchanging wisdom
speaking always of continuities
while I, once young
growing old, experience seasoning as
all breezes are stilled. On
this track I daily tread, green
trees are stability themselves
rooted, drawing from ground
waters flowing even in dryness.
“We are here to bear witness. We
were before you and when you
return to your original state,
dust to dust, we’ll go on,
proclaiming the seasonal turning.”
I stand in fields
of poppies and sunflowers.
When all civilisations crumble,
imperial delusions fail, will
nature humanity restore?
© 2024 Phil Kemp
24 июн 2024
