Most of you know that I am gaga about the solstices! There is something magical about the Summer Solstice - even after living in Southern Arizona for 20 plus years. Over 15 hours of daylight and extra vibrational energy. Solar lagniappe! I dare you to celebrate the extra light: make a love potion, light a bonfire, skinny-dip, picnic with a friend or lover ~
In honor of excess ~ three poems for Summer Solstice 2015!
Peace, Ding Dongs, y el sol! Elizabeth
*******************************************
a
hollyhock
shot up to meet
the summer solstice
shot up to meet
the summer solstice
***
Corazón
mÃo, reina del apio y de la artesa:
pequeña
leoparda del hilo y la cebolla:
me
gusta ver brillar tu imperio diminuto,
las
armas de la cera, del vino, del aceite,
del
ajo, de la tierra, por tus manos abiertas
de
la sustancia azul encendida en tus manos,
de
la transmigración del sueño a la ensalada,
del
reptil enrollado en la manguera.
Tú,
con tu podadora levantando el perfume,
tú,
con la dirección del jabón en la espuma,
tú,
subiendo mis locas escalas y escaleras,
tú,
manejando el sÃntoma de mi caligrafÃa
y
encontrando en la arena del cuaderno
las
letras extraviadas que buscaban tu boca.
My
heart, queen of the beehive and the barnyard,
little
leopard of the string and onions,
I
love to watch your miniature empire
sparkle:
your weapons of wax and wine and oil,
garlic,
and the soil that opens for your hands,
the
blue material that ignites in your hands,
the
transmigration of dream into salad,
the
snake rolled up in the garden hose.
You
with your sickle that lifts the perfumes,
you
with the bossy soapsuds,
you
climbing my crazy ladders and stairs.
You
taking charge: even my handwriting, its characteristics,
even
the sand grains in my notebooks – finding in those pages
lost
syllables that were searching for your mouth.
***
Summer
Solstice
I
wanted to see where beauty comes from
without
you in the world, hauling my heart
across
sixty acres of northeast meadow,
my
pockets filling with flowers.
Then
I remembered,
it’s
you I miss in the brightness
and
body of every living name:
rattlebox,
yarrow, wild vetch.
You
are the green wonder of June,
root
and quasar, the thirst for salt.
When
I finally understand that people fail
at
love, what is left but cinquefoil, thistle,
the
paper wings of the dragonfly
aeroplaning
the soul with a sudden blue hilarity?
If
I get the story right, desire is continuous,
equatorial.
There is still so much
I
want to know: what you believe
can
never be removed from us,
what
you dreamed on Walnut Street
in
the unanswerable dark of your childhood,
learning
pleasure on your own.
Tell
me our story: are we impetuous,
are
we kind to each other, do we surrender
to
what the mind cannot think past?
Where
is the evidence I will learn
to
be good at loving?
The
black dog orbits the horseshoe pond
for
treefrogs in their plangent emergencies.
There
are violet hills,
there
is the covenant of duskbirds.
The
moon comes over the mountain
like
a big peach, and I want to tell you
what
I couldn’t say the night we rushed
North,
how I love the seriousness of your fingers
and
the way you go into yourself,
calling
my half-name like a secret.
I
stand between taproot and treespire.
Here
is the compass rose
to
help me live through this.
Here
are twelve ways of knowing
what
blooms even in the blindness
of
such longing. Yellow oxeye,
viper’s
bugloss with its set of pink arms
pleading
do not forget me.
We
hunger for eloquence.
We
measure the isopleths.
I
am visiting my life with reckless plenitude.
The
air is fragrant with tiny strawberries.
Fireflies
turn on their electric wills:
an
effulgence. Let me come back
whole,
let me remember how to touch you
before
it is too late.
