What does the summer solstice conjure up for you? The beginning of soft sunshine? The end of the exam season? Lush harvests of soft fruit and saladings from the garden?

Or “Too hot to be outside”?

As it was for me until I took the step of “flying” (railway travel, actually) “north with the swallows until September” or even longer (as in Coronoapause when I stayed for three years).

Here are three poems to this time of year, written pre-2014, 2021, and 2024.

Scene 1: Longstanton, Cambridgeshire, UK in the allotment-sharing decades between 1995 and 2015

Around summer solstice

Not coping with the plenty of it all
she hovers, brooding, in a shady place.

Bees work the clover, linger on the thyme.
The song thrush claims his highest pitch;
the beans are nestled in their staining beds
that blacken fingers. Beyond the falling gate,
too many pods to pluck; the currants sinking deep
garnet, ruby; the artichoke hearts
unburdening, cramming with brilliant
crayon blue their crowns.
				
To capture still
that sharp, soft blossoming ­
to fast-freeze the sweet bitterness
of fava beans, to test the acid honey of
potatoes whitening beneath the row
and speaking of the plenty of it all -
she hovers, writing, in a shady place.

© Kathy McVittie 1994, from 'the route to grace' (2014), Dalefied Press, Longstanton CB24 3BP  UK  p 31

Scene 2: Highland Scotland, in the campervan and in the hermit-like years between 2016 and 2023

Sunstroken

In June
I'd rather walk by moon.

In August
The hays, the haze, the dust!

In October when life's shit
I cannot get enough of it.


© Kathy Labrum McVittie  at Solstice (Litha) 2021

Scene 3: Alternating between Highland Scotland and Cambridge, and held by many communities, including The Way of the Buzzard Mystery School.


Burgeoning at Litha 2024


If I had a new name today

it would be, "she who at last finds her place of belonging";

she whose body - welcoming her home - is the dwelling place of the divine;

she who is alone and not lonely

(for the White Wolf is her companionary animal

into the Place of the Ancestors

whose pain she has carried)

and now she lies down

and will rest her head

upon his lap

at the feet of the Buddha


© Kathy Labrum McVittie noon 20 June 2024

and if you wonder, as I did, whether ‘companionary’ is a word, then go to

https://www.powerthesaurus.org/companionary/synonyms

and find out.