Tag: midsummer

reading not writing

I really thought that I would do better today and actually find something to write about, especially as it’s midsummer’s day.

It would have been my grandmother’s birthday and Grandpa always gave her a poetry book. But I have no new summer poetry and I’ve been too busy reading this weekend to do any real writing.

As the reading hasn’t all been for pleasure, I did slip out for a short walk this morning, so I will once more fall back on posting pictures instead.
Continue reading “reading not writing”

a rose is a rose is a rose

Wednesday was the 21st of June – the solstice and the start of summer. Which means today is the 24th – Midsummer’s Day and as good a time as any to post more photos of roses.

tumbling pink roses Continue reading “a rose is a rose is a rose”

moon magnetism

midsummer moon

Is there a poet in the land
who can resist that moon, those stars,
who is not sitting, pen in hand
recounting how love leaves her scars?

[…]

Enraptured by the moon’s bright light,
I, too, am writing poems tonight.

 

(Well, I was, some 15 years ago, which is when those lines originated as part of a tetrameter sonnet with heavy end stopping and extraordinarily unimaginative rhymes. The worst thing about learning more about poetry is that I try and write fewer bad poems and end up just writing less.)

summary

Yesterday, I wrote 229 words under the title summery II. Much of that post has been condensed into the following 14 words. Which is why this is titled summary.

Through the long hours
of the longest days,
the linden hums
with honeyed promises

bee on linden flowers

midsummer day

Today is midsummer’s day, a fact that always confused me as a child: if June 21st was the first day of summer and the 24th was midsummer, did that mean it was all over on the 27th?

Actually, given British summers, it wasn’t that really all that confusing. Perhaps if I’d known then about the St John’s bonfires, I’d have thought it quite reasonable that you might need to light a fire to keep warm even in late June.

Book dedication: Midsummer Day, 1910

Continue reading “midsummer day”

cat’ku

Looking for something summery to post for San Juan, I found this:

sunny verandah
a scattering
of kittens and kibble

Cat family lounging on sunny verandah

The photo appears to have been taken on June 24th, two years ago. The blog post for that day is a proper Midsummer Night poem: noche de san juan.

noche de san juan

I dreamed of you last night and woke
to moonlight, sheet-tangled feet
cat-twisted and cold.

I drowsed again, through decades, slipped
between cities and crossed continents,
embracing and embraced,
now chasing and now chased,
no pause between the kisses passed
from partner on to partner
down through the yearning years.

I dreamed of you last night
and woke to moonlight.

 
 
(St John’s Eve – Midsummer Night – is celebrated across Spain with fire jumping in the street and general festivities. It’s supposed to be a time of powerful magic, and seemed a suitable title for this slightly chaotic dream poem.)