Looking for something summery to post for San Juan, I found this:
sunny verandah
a scattering
of kittens and kibble
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.
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.)
I just pulled one of my grandmother’s poetry books from the shelf. There aren’t that many of them, but they are all inscribed “Midsummer Day” and were gifts from her husband on her birthday. This particular book – Poems by Thomas Hood – is dated exactly 100 years ago.
My favourite Hood poem is The Bridge of Sighs, but that’s too long to post here, so I’ll settle for one that’s appropriate to the time as well as the date:
Continue reading “midsummer night”
don't confuse the narrator 