Jim Brown: "Summer Solstice 2006"

The whole year ‘round, from my front porch
(except for days-on-end of snow clouds, rain clouds)
I watch the sun set behind every bump and dip
of the mountain skyline, from north of Mt. Eddy
to south of Castle Crags.

Tonight, a few hours before summer solstice,
I stand just outside my front door and note once more
the sun’s intersection with the skyline, hidden
behind the slender trunk of our neighbor’s cherry tree.

The door and the tree establish themselves
as cardinal points of observation
for this annual event.

After I am gone, my successor
might continue the observance, and so on
until the cherry tree, the house, are gone.

Long after the age of human observers
the Eddies and the Crags will shift and crumble
and be gone, but the planet will continue
tipping one way, then another, as it circles
the sun, the ancient one that subsumes
all we are and all we know.

The earth, the sun, in far off temporal frames
we cannot imagine,

will themselves be gone.

                                                But what of this joy?

"Summer Solstice 2006" by Jim Brown, from Language Be My Broncho. © Psychosynthesis Press, 2012. Presented here by publisher submission.

Art credit: "Sunset, Mount Eddy, California," by Tim Corcoran.