In the northern hemisphere, June 20th/21st marks the summer solstice, point where the daylight is with us for the longest, and the dark at its shortest. The sun rises at its maximum northeasterly point, and sets at its most northwesterly. I love this fire festival but also find it quite demanding in a way that the ‘shoulder’ festivals of spring and autumn equinoxes are not. At those, I go deep. At the summer solstice I find myself a bit adrift. Consequently I find it hard to write about, and the solstice and equinox poems I’ve exchanged with a friend for maybe 15 years now are thinner poems at the summer solstice.
There are many memories that stick to this day for me. The first is perhaps hitchhiking as a teenager – without my parents’ knowledge – to Stonehenge free festival, where I camped round fires and with guitars with many other hippies in a small beech wood, and we walked to the stone circle at dawn (in those days the stones were not fenced off). As I left, someone I knew pressed a copy of Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums into my hands. It’s true to say that both those events changed my life.
I also married on the summer solstice – in belting rain – and my new (now both ex- and late-) husband dropped the marriage certificate into a puddle as soon as we were outside (accidentally; but still. Yes, it did turn out to be symbolic.)
More recently, when I first met TM, we walked and camped along the Ridgeway, that prehistoric track that crosses from east to west, in southern and southwestern England for a few days, to arrive at the ancient megalithic site of Avebury spread out on the Wiltshire downs, with its huge stone circle, which by then I had decided was more significant than Stonehenge, and had a happy and rich time, until we found our car had been impounded; and when I arrived home my daughter’s much-loved pony, who was born to her little old mare, had been fatally injured.
So writing this I can see it’s not surprising that it’s a date that stirs mixed emotions for me.
However. One undilutedly happy memory is of the many years I took a group each solstice and equinox, no matter what the weather, on a daylong silent writing pilgrimage to Merrivale processional Bronze Age stone row on Dartmoor, in the UK. We would process in silence down the double stone avenue to arrive at a stone circle with a single menhir (standing stone).
Here’s a poem from one of those days.
Summer Solstice, Merrivale Stone Avenue and Circle
[After the horrors of battle] a strange madness came upon Myrddin… Into the forest he went, glad to lie hidden beneath the ash trees. He watched the wild creatures grazing on the pastures of the glades. He made use of the roots of plants and of grasses, of fruit from trees and of the blackberries in the thicket. He became a Man of the Woods, Myrddin Wyllt, as if dedicated to the woods. So for a whole summer he stayed hidden in the woods, discovered by none, forgetful of himself and of his own, lurking like a wild thing.*
i
in the ruins of the old school house
four winds, one beech tree
two ragged skewbalds
and nine writers
open the notebook of day
ii
red-sheathed bog cotton
flutters its pennants like snags of cloud
misplaced thoughts
or prayer-flags
iii
lift this granite pebble
from the ochre stream bed
from the water’s conversations
the pebble’s granite angles
receive and transmit light
resist my palm
iv
the year has come to fruition
what still needs release
before the slide through harvest-time
back to the fallows?
v
after the battles and bloodshed
what remains is peace
the mysteries of love
are stronger than the mysteries
of death
vi
we walk the pairs of stones
in our procession
in a covenant with the past
and in silence
vii
in the 11 stones of the circle
the day is both clear and opaque
the winds skim our heads
but we’ve stilled
condensed to light and shadow
vii
we put on the woods
like a green cloak
Su says
I wear my dad on the inside, his heart
the land listens
viii
the pebble is
my contract with silence
ix
in the world’s hurry
this will endure
x
the pebble is a passing moment
stalled into matter and time
stony bones reassembled
like mine
from atoms
dust of fallen stars
and all of us
spinning in space
© Roselle Angwin
*Excerpt from Vita Merlini, Geoffrey of Monmouth, ca. 1150
This sequence appears in Bardo, by Roselle Angwin (Shearsman 2011)
*
With love to you all for the year’s turning – may it usher in kinder times.
*
You might also want to see: https://www.travelfranceonline.com/feux-de-la-saint-jean-summer-solstice/
Happy solstice, Roselle 🍀