Don’t Tell the Children

The summer solstice is a cruel irony. I spent an hour with my aged Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (copyright 1987) after writing that sentence. I love words to the point of obsession sometimes.

Solstice is from the Latin “solstitium,” meaning “sun + to come to a stop.” The summer solstice in the northern hemisphere, the day when the sun stops its day-lengthening climb in the sky, falls officially on June 21. I looked up “irony” as well. The meaning I was after was listed as definition 3 a (1): incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result.

The 13-line explanation of “irony” is the longest definition of an “i” word in 16 columns of words between “inversion” (14 lines long, a reversal of position) and the final word, “izzard” (a noun, probably from Middle French, meaning the letter z). I discovered a good new word in there: irrefragable (of Latin origin), meaning “impossible to refute or to break, as in arguments or rules.”

I’m joining the Poetry Jam today, which is why the emphasis is on summer. With the solstice, summer begins, but from this point onward, the hours of daylight begin to recede. For some reason, I feel a tad cheated by that. You’ll find more summery attitudes here.

Children do not know
cruel irony underlies
the summer solstice
like the grass
beneath the sprinkler
through which they run
screaming with joy
in the hot June sun.
Summer’s freedom
has begun, stretching
out as far as they can see
in its eternal
light.
In truth
the solstice
marks the end
of growing light.
From this apex
summer days begin
their inexorable march
to autumn and its equinox
a clandestine waning
of the sun.

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A Wordless Wednesday post

A Sight for Sore Eyes

This is what summertime looks like where I live. My eldest daughter from Oregon has spent the past week with me while resting from her travels along the length of the West Coast. So I took her on one of my favorite drives. We went up this road here:

Then we hiked a bit, avoiding these:

Poison oak

and western star thistle, the nastiest plant in the West... We got through these and found this:

A sweet little creek still running in July...

and a reflection pool, where we found things like this...

and found things like this

and even some giants in waiting underwater:

We also found things like these two creatures from the blue lagoon:

We studied this orb spider's web for a length of time

before heading back to the car for home.

Trying Not to Grouse at the Autumnal Equinox

In spite of the harvest, in spite of the colorful trees, the brisk days, the frost-edges leaves, autumn is not my favorite time.

Autumn continues to be the precursor to winter, no matter how I try to think of the present, stay in the now, la-di-da. We hit the equinox, and my dahlias are dying. Everything in my garden that has given me joy all spring and summer is fading to death. The optimism I have worked so hard to build in AA now has to work hard against the flower gardener's sorrow.

I'm out there in the garden every morning, gathering in the last survivors, placing vases of flowers everywhere in my home. You'd think I was preparing for a catastrophe.

We're going through a heat wave here, a week of the 100+ temperatures; you'd think I'd be happy. But I'm not. I'm sad. I'm picking the stragglers, the vulnerable, the less-than-award-winners I grew this summer. Negative thinking is running amok.

It's a beautiful world I live in, BUT depression is starting to set in as the light says goodnight earlier each day. Maybe I suffer from SADD. Maybe I'm just MAD. I pour my heart and hands into that garden and it is the season for seeds, little birds that feed on the seeds, the last hurrah before the season I hate.

Boy, am I feeling melancholy today. The heat is cooking the tender young buds. Another week of this is forecast. Blah, blah, blah.

Thank God for small things, big things: I'm headed tomorrow for the redwoods, the tallest trees in the world. Thank God Arnold Schwarzenegger didn't close the California campgrounds. Thank God that today is my 18-month sobriety date. (Enter negative thinking: I had 15 years and went out!) (Out, damn thought; I've had a wonderful life of sobriety mostly, and I work the program hard, and I sponsor three beautiful beacons of women who are getting It, and the past 18 months has been among the best of my whole life! Thank you, Higher Power, that I haven't once thought of killing myself in a long, long time. There)

Okay, now I'm more serene. We can learn from the cycles of life. I have learned: to have faith that the dead will rise again; to have faith that each season is necessary; to trudge when necessary; to write poems when sad; to enjoy the moment even though this too shall pass; to use the same approach when unhappy; and to be glad for those who are glad about autumn.

According to the weather report, fall won't hit here for quite a few weeks, and then we'll have the pumpkins and squash, the riotous joy in the trees. The good news is: I can still wear shorts!

Here's a silly poem about my take on the autumnal equinox.

Equinox

One wakens to find an autumnal gloom

has lowered the boom on summer.

The bright yellow days segue to grays,

and the loins that ran rampant grow still

Yes, autumn is crisp with colors in the mist,

with apples and pumpkins galore, but still –

And not the least of all are the colors of fall

and the riotous joy in the trees. But please

let the haze drift away and the sun warm this day,

and don’t let the winter come soon. For one’s bones

are brittle and they ache a little, and one’s brain

doesn’t bloom in the gloom.

Chris Alba (c) 2008