Summer Solstice 2009 - a reading (on YouTube)
Shadows slant from north to south as the sun continues its annual progress, a celestial pilgrimage through this sublunary realm.
The morning whispers in pearl white velvet as shadow cardinals dance behind the blinds. Outside, a knot of butterflies chase through the grass like a cloud of mischievous faeries playing tag on the wing. From ground level the lawn looks like a jungle, the ants a distant tribe of hunters pursuing their quarry high into the canopy. Elite arachnids in bright green and orange uniforms parachute down upon unsuspecting prey. Tiny wrens twitter warnings against each intruder lurking behind the morning leaves.
Suddenly, a gray stillness descends as though the world outside has paused for breath. Thunderheads obscure the horizon. Stormbound light casts long, double shadows directly south. The sky grumbles in strobed slow-motion with unheralded flashes of freeze-frame anger that capture the world in thunderously burning violet. Raindrops ripple and shatter the world's reflection in the mirror of an ancient pond.
Green leaves glow against a slate of purple clouds as the downpour trickles away into torrents of slanted sunshine. An indigo silhouette swoops in below the rooftops, an iridescent shadow with an offering of bread rinds it sacrifices at the hanging pool. At the bottom of that restless, rippled basin, in a spot of sunlight no larger than a silver dollar, a thousand summer dreams swim free.
As the sun melts and runs into an orange lake, a lavender sky oozes through the trees as evening slowly slips toward night. Beyond the field of twinkling, midsummer lights, the voices of the dead call as whippoorwills, a reminder that this time is brief and must not be forgotten.
© 2009 Edward P. Morgan III
