Lughnasa 2011 -a reading (on YouTube)
In the struggle between light and darkness, the light is failing. The outnumbered hours of night have launched a surprise attack. Like a bad year in Machiavellian Florence, we bar the gate and lay in supplies against the long, impending siege of darkness. Resistance gathers throughout the high country, in hilltop forts and hidden, lakeside coves. Reaping maidens don gowns of green and stretch the backs of their men, their harvest promises extracted and bound with hay.
At midnight, a lone firefly finds me, like Hamlet's ghost, keeping a worried watch upon the wall. He bears a message from the summer solstice, his tiny beacon turning back the night. Like a morningtide rainbow after a sun shower, his flickering torch is a promise or a reminder. We will not be abandoned by our strongest ally in our coming time of need.
At first light, foraging parties roam the wood under a keen-eyed escort, reaping the bountiful berry harvest before it, like the surrounding faerie kingdom, falls into decay. Summer grapes, like the irides of Europa's wild-eyed children, or the wide eyes of playful garden predators, have gone from green to black overnight. Bees, like summer soldiers, gather golden nectar from colorful morning glories and crepe myrtles to create the supplies they need to overwinter in their fastness.
In distant fields and meadows, the tawny heads from the first fruits of harvest are crushed to powder beneath the circling, ox-drawn stone. Brickwork ovens throw the first heat against winter's eventual arrival. Offerings of freshly baked bread fill the air to appease the spirits of the homeless and the hungry. As we've sown in this verdant time of plenty, so in the darkness shall we reap.
We long for stability, for prosperity, for peace. But all we are given are wheat and wild grapes, fieldstone and timber, venison and salmon, spring water and perhaps a little honey. Enough to live and share if we don't become absorbed in the drama of conflict. From the elements at hand we build our lives in any way we choose, in light or in darkness, for good or for ill. In this, we are inseparable from our environment.
At midnight, a lone firefly finds me, like Hamlet's ghost, keeping a worried watch upon the wall. He bears a message from the summer solstice, his tiny beacon turning back the night. Like a morningtide rainbow after a sun shower, his flickering torch is a promise or a reminder. We will not be abandoned by our strongest ally in our coming time of need.
At first light, foraging parties roam the wood under a keen-eyed escort, reaping the bountiful berry harvest before it, like the surrounding faerie kingdom, falls into decay. Summer grapes, like the irides of Europa's wild-eyed children, or the wide eyes of playful garden predators, have gone from green to black overnight. Bees, like summer soldiers, gather golden nectar from colorful morning glories and crepe myrtles to create the supplies they need to overwinter in their fastness.
In distant fields and meadows, the tawny heads from the first fruits of harvest are crushed to powder beneath the circling, ox-drawn stone. Brickwork ovens throw the first heat against winter's eventual arrival. Offerings of freshly baked bread fill the air to appease the spirits of the homeless and the hungry. As we've sown in this verdant time of plenty, so in the darkness shall we reap.
We long for stability, for prosperity, for peace. But all we are given are wheat and wild grapes, fieldstone and timber, venison and salmon, spring water and perhaps a little honey. Enough to live and share if we don't become absorbed in the drama of conflict. From the elements at hand we build our lives in any way we choose, in light or in darkness, for good or for ill. In this, we are inseparable from our environment.
© 2011 Edward P. Morgan III
