At 9:24 this evening, the sun reaches its highest point of the year at the Tropic of Cancer. The solstice, from the Latin “solstitium, meaning “the standing still of the sun.” We’ve had such a long grey spring, with rain and low skies, but this afternoon the sky cleared and is now blue and cloudless. I’m hoping it’s not too late for beans (I’ve had to sow them three times because of slugs…) and that the tomatoes will come out of their sulk to put on some growth. The salad greens (vernal!) are lovely and so were these sprouts a few weeks ago, playing in spring grass in Edmonton.
That shadow in the bottom corner? Their grandmother, who misses them all.
Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;
It may be you are from old people and from women, and
from offspring taken soon out of their mother’s laps,
And here you are the mother’s laps.This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old
mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.—Walt Whitman
...Theresa Kishkan 