The Summer Solstice

Ode to the longest day

Perhaps today you will feel it, something both strange and enchanting, the usual rhythm of your day disturbed in the slightest degree. It happened to me one June twenty-first years ago and ever since, like clockwork the feeling has come, a strange visitor arriving to usher in the season.

You had only to rise, lean from your window, and know that this indeed was the first real time of freedom and living, this was the first morning of summer.¹