Writers Circle Prompt: Midsummer

 

 

 

Midsummer

 

In the Northern hemisphere, Summer Solstice is the longest day, and Midsummer is a few days past Solstice. The days start getting shorter a degree at a time.  We settle into the long summer to raise flora and fauna babies—how many species on earth?  I watch the changes in vegetable and flower gardens and trees as sprouts turn into plants and leaves.

 (pause)

I sit on a second-floor-porch

rocking chair with a book open in my lap.

Earlier I saw the dawn break

through a cloudy sky, and watched the sun rise.

Now I pull my consciousness

into the lettered world.

I set this day aside for the luxury of reading.

My awareness telescopes

between small and large plains

of being: words and birds.

My eyes follow the birds

flying back and forth from

the castle turret to the tree top

straight ahead of me. I pick

up their songs, a dialogue

I do not recognize.  Back to the book

where lines of type unroll and English words

lean forward Into phrases and discoveries. 

This is a language I know well.

And this is the ideal midsummer,

When protests and letter writing

can be set aside for words and birds,

flowers and feathered friends.

© 2026 Susan L. Chast

Writer's Circle Prompts.

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