Midsummer Night's Dream

'Never has the tilting of the planet been so pleasant'
So writes the Danish poet Inger Christensen.


I look out of the window from the office at the clouds moving eastwards; silent and bovine.
Imagine the tilt of the planet towards the sun; how the northern-most places are lit all day long.
Midsummer - the peak of the cycle, the top of the clock, the highest point of the elliptical curve, the flung ball arcing before it falls...

And with this, a profusion of flora - verges of poppies, ragwort, celandine, almost gone to seed. Larksong and carp in the river, pimpernel, vetch, gnats in frenzy, pointillist lacewings, umbels crawling with insect. Giant nettles.
The sun is hot; drawing out berries in forelocks of grass.

And within this a nub of darkness, beating hard, light's necessary shadow. The foreknowledge of winter sleep, held inside all living things,
written in the marrow and the seed, recalled in our bones,
permafrost.


How many more midsummers will I get? Fifty more, I hope and each as beautiful and hopeful..

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.

—Oberon describes Titania's bower, where she sleeps.