Literary Hook: Poem a tribute to the summer solstice

By Christine Swanberg
Author and Poet

Here is a poem for the summer solstice.

Summer Solstice

A pair of green, comma, angel wing butterflies cavort

Around the pear tree, the young pears aureola-rosy.

Everywhere another shade of green whistles a Celtic jig.

A patch of catnip lures a tawny Angora cat

With a gorgeous black mask. I love to see him

Rolling in the driveway, chasing crows

Who have eaten the spring-pink, bristly strawberries.

Raccoons resume their night marauding, leading their kin

To the skylight to peep down on us.

Now the air’s obese with birdsong and the pink smell

Of peonies, day-sleeping fireflies cradled on their leaves.

I sleep in, too, then listen to obscure female jazz singers.

Plans slip away, disappearing like barrel slugs.

Each sunset brings wispy angel wings.

Mars travels close to the earth, orange as a field lily.

A question mark angel wing butterfly spends time

Cozied on my arm. Everywhere the undersides of leaves

Silently tend larvae. Listen. Nighthawks croon.

Squirrels are changing from red to gray. Listen.

The earth says yes and no and yes again.

Listen. So much goes on without us.

This poem was first published in Moon Journal and again in Who Walks Among the Trees with Charity (Wind Publications).

Christine Swanberg is a local author.

From the June 22-28 issue

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