Poem for Tuesday and Homestead Farm

Summer Solstice
By Stacie Cassarino

I wanted to see where beauty comes from
without you in the world, hauling my heart
across sixty acres of northeast meadow,
my pockets filling with flowers.
Then I remembered,
it’s you I miss in the brightness
and body of every living name:
rattlebox, yarrow, wild vetch.
You are the green wonder of June,
root and quasar, the thirst for salt.
When I finally understand that people fail
at love, what is left but cinquefoil, thistle,
the paper wings of the dragonfly
aeroplaning the soul with a sudden blue hilarity?
If I get the story right, desire is continuous,
equatorial. There is still so much
I want to know: what you believe
can never be removed from us,
what you dreamed on Walnut Street
in the unanswerable dark of your childhood,
learning pleasure on your own.
Tell me our story: are we impetuous,
are we kind to each other, do we surrender
to what the mind cannot think past?
Where is the evidence I will learn
to be good at loving?
The black dog orbits the horseshoe pond
for treefrogs in their plangent emergencies.
There are violet hills,
there is the covenant of duskbirds.
The moon comes over the mountain
like a big peach, and I want to tell you
what I couldn’t say the night we rushed
North, how I love the seriousness of your fingers
and the way you go into yourself,
calling my half-name like a secret.
I stand between taproot and treespire.
Here is the compass rose
to help me live through this.
Here are twelve ways of knowing
what blooms even in the blindness
of such longing. Yellow oxeye,
viper’s bugloss with its set of pink arms
pleading do not forget me.
We hunger for eloquence.
We measure the isopleths.
I am visiting my life with reckless plenitude.
The air is fragrant with tiny strawberries.
Fireflies turn on their electric wills:
an effulgence. Let me come back
whole, let me remember how to touch you
before it is too late.

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I had to get up really early for my annual mammogram, about which the best thing I can say is that they got me in and out very quickly. Otherwise, Monday was mostly a chore day anyway: making and moving appointments, running out for a couple of shopping items, trying to organize my summer. I scheduled Daniel's wisdom teeth extraction, then dragged him to the mall with me for consolation frozen yogurt since he'd been on the computer all morning (after he got up at nearly 11, which ends next week). Bath & Body Works is having its bi-annual sale so I stocked up on a bunch of Vanilla Coconut and Dark Kiss things while they're 75% off. Adam was invited by a friend to Dave & Buster's to play games, so he had a more exciting day.

It rained all morning and drizzled occasionally in the early afternoon, which kept the temperatures tolerable since the sun wasn't out all that much. I took a walk in the woods, which stayed cool even as it started to get hot, and the deer were out eating the wet leaves, though the cul-de-sac bunny was hiding. We had French toast and bacon (well, fake bacon) for dinner and watched the season finale of Sanctuary, which is trying too hard to be The X-Men and had too much Will stalling, too little Helen being awesome, but Jon Stewart's analysis of how the news covers news has restored my faith. Here are some more photos from picking blueberries at Homestead Farm last weekend including the unripe blackberries and runaway chick:

















Have a happy summer solstice!