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.
Continue reading “midsummer day”
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.
Muppet-haired willow
tosses her head
at the coming storm
I think it’s Animal that she reminds me of – the crazy drummer – though her hair obviously isn’t the right colour.
I don’t have many more shooting stars poems to post on the blog, but there are other things being celebrated this weekend, as well as the perseids.
It’s been several years since I’ve spent August in Spain, as I’ve attended the Swanwick Writers’ Summer School, both as participant and as course leader, since I first won a place some years ago.
Before that, though, I was living in Madrid, and August was important en mi barrio for la fiesta de la Paloma. This year, Monday 15th August will be a fiesta nacional (la Asunción de la Virgen), and in her honour I have dug out this old poem. It was first published in the New Entertainer, I think, when I was writing my Capital Letters column:
Continue reading “stars and doves”
Not perseids this time, just sparkling sunshine reflected off waves that looks** like shooting stars if you screw your eyes up against the glare:
Postcard from the beach
The weather is nice…
The sun is dropping
diamonds on the sea.
I squint against the glare
and see a storm
of shooting stars that fall
too fast to single one
and make a wish.
Yet this whole moment
is a wish for you.
** yes, the singular verb agrees with its subject – the sparkling sunshine – but it sure sounds odd.
don't confuse the narrator 