Summer Solstice

The sun lasts until 10 p.m. These are the good days, intrinsically so, because without knowledge of history, without, even, knowledge of the unfoldings of the seasons, these days would be good. We all crave the sun. We’re all linked to it, and we hold it inside ourselves like fireflies. Like the leaves from the tree, like the Earth round the sun, we all revolve here. When the good days come they almost instantly begin to fade; shriveled berries, uneaten by birds, burn into soil; turkey vultures revolve and revolve, and then they, too, circle the sun; salmon become the stream, and then they become the sea, just as the ground itself is made of skeletons, just as decaying leaves smell like fermented apple cider. These are the good days, you see, because we revolve just like everyone else does. We are born of the sun, pieces of it, in fact, and in these long days we are instinctively more aware of that very notion, and perhaps in these days we feel a little bit more like we’re home.