Solstice Poems

Solstice (Summer)

Twilight knits embers along cloud-clefts of sky
with blunt-pointed needles of glass.
No rain for the wind-weary wasps
bobbing uneasily just over the fields—
jaw-chipped, hungry,
wired beads of obsidian and brass.

Alone the temerity of a spring-milked kid
plucking the lowest fruits from the cherry tree
just within reach of its tether;
it will be slaughtered, skinned, split and spitted
the next morning, its blood simmered and seasoned into morcilla
to celebrate the baptism of the rancher’s first grandchild.

The kid does not know this—
only the chipping bark under its bony toes,
the tartness of the cherries across its teeth
and the easy, hot breeze baiting the wasps,
drought’s width one more month before monsoon.

Underneath, no one hears the loamy cry
of time’s footfalls,
deeper, sinking shuffle,
memory wending like a night-blooming vine
through cliff-gray cracks of granite
toward starlight.

06/25/2017
for Ashley Jean

solstice (winter)

eternal rebirth
as though the bloodstone
of a flycatcher’s breast
in the wind
or the smiling of a face
at last breath

12/20/2022
for sharla ronstadt
(in memory of george mairs)

Carlos Valentin III is a member of Pima Friends Meeting in Tucson, AZ (IMYM).