Summer Solstice

Midsummer’s Day; a strange, haunted, grey-skied day with an aura of brooding. Not a menacing brooding, I’m glad to say, but a tension is palpable in the air. It is as if something is coming, but something that is as yet not fully formed; something beneath the surface, hesitating in the sweltering air as it strives to find expression.

I sip my green tea with peppermint and wonder at it. Is this the beginning of a new phase, or the hovering on the brink before a fall? It is midsummer, but not a midsummer of dewfall and roses; one of sweat and muted light. Solstice means “sun standing still”, and it is that standing still I feel I’m sensing, that pausing of the whole world, as if in doubt, or before something is brought into being.

Stillness at midsummer;
On the cusp of the seasons,
The wave-crest
Edging over to break
And, breaking, change.
Things unsuspected
And things longed-for, both
Will come, if the gods
Will it; meanwhile we
Carry on, here beneath
The grey heavens, waiting
For the storm to break
Or for joy to break through
As the magic of the future
Becomes present magic now.

In all likelihood my emotions are a purely psychosomatic response to the heat and the humidity today. I half hope so, and half hope not. Like that enchanted Christmas Eve feeling in childhood, there is something inherently thrilling about sensing one is on the eve of some event. Only, it would be nice to have some idea of what the event is to be!

Going home now to do some sewing – three pairs of my summer trousers have all sprung holes at the same time, so I’m patching madly, as I happen to like wearing trousers…