To swimming and the call of water ~

Midsummer

On nights like this we used to swim in the quarry,   

the boys making up games requiring them to tear off  the girls' clothes   

and the girls cooperating, because they had new bodies since last summer

and they wanted to exhibit them, the brave ones   

leaping off  the high rocks — bodies crowding the water.

The nights were humid, still. The stone was cool and wet,

marble for  graveyards, for buildings that we never saw,   

buildings in cities far away.

On cloudy nights, you were blind. Those nights the rocks were dangerous,   

but in another way it was all dangerous, that was what we were after.   

The summer started. Then the boys and girls began to pair off   

but always there were a few left at the end — sometimes they'd keep watch,

sometimes they'd pretend to go off  with each other like the rest,

but what could they do there, in the woods? No one wanted to be them.   

But they'd show up anyway, as though some night their luck would change,   

fate would be a different fate.

At the beginning and at the end, though, we were all together.

After the evening chores, after the smaller children were in bed,   

then we were free. Nobody said anything, but we knew the nights we'd meet   

and the nights we wouldn't. Once or twice, at the end of summer,   

we could see a baby was going to come out of all that kissing.

And for those two, it was terrible, as terrible as being alone.   

The game was over. We'd sit on the rocks smoking cigarettes,   

worrying about the ones who weren't there.

And then finally walk home through the fields,   

because there was always work the next day.   

And the next day, we were kids again, sitting on the front steps in the morning,   

eating a peach.  Just that, but it seemed an honor to have a mouth.   

And then going to work, which meant helping out in the fields.   

One boy worked for an old lady, building shelves.   

The house was very old, maybe built when the mountain was built.

And then the day faded. We were dreaming, waiting for night.   

Standing at the front door at twilight, watching the shadows lengthen.   

And a voice in the kitchen was always complaining about the heat,

wanting the heat to break.

Then the heat broke, the night was clear.   

And you thought of  the boy or girl you'd be meeting later.   

And you thought of  walking into the woods and lying down,   

practicing all those things you were learning in the water.   

And though sometimes you couldn't see the person you were with,

there was no substitute for that person.

The summer night glowed; in the field, fireflies were glinting.

And for those who understood such things, the stars were sending messages:   

You will leave the village where you were born   

and in another country you'll become very rich, very powerful,

but always you will mourn something you left behind, even though   

you can't say what it was,

and eventually you will return to seek it.

Louise Glück

To mail, to stars, to rain...all things lovely and July

Under Stars

The sleep of this night deepens

because I have walked coatless from the house

carrying the white envelope.

All night it will say one name

in its little tin house by the roadside.

I have raised the metal flag

so its shadow under the roadlamp

leaves an imprint on the rain-heavy bushes.

Now I will walk back

thinking of the few lights still on

in the town a mile away.

In the yellowed light of a kitchen

the millworker has finished his coffee,

his wife has laid out the white slices of bread

on the counter. Now while the bed they have left

is still warm, I will think of you, you

who are so far away

you have caused me to look up at the stars.

Tonight they have not moved

from childhood, those games played after dark.

Again I walk into the wet grass

toward the starry voices. Again, I

am the found one, intimate, returned

by all I touch on the way.

Tess Gallagher

Here's to the Summer Solstice on Sunday, June 21st!

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

Shiki Masaoka

*** 

Corazón mío, 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 síntoma de mi caligrafía

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.

Pablo Neruda

***

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.

Stacie Cassarino