Summer Solstice
–Jorie Graham

Here it is now, emergent, as if an eagerness, a desire to say there this is
done this is
concluded I have given all I have the store
is full the
crop is
in the counsel has decided the head and shoulders of the invisible have been re-
configured sewn back together melded—the extra
seconds of light like
hearing steps come running towards me, then here you
are, you came all this
distance,
you could call it matrimony it is not an illusion it can be calculated to the last position
consider no further think no longer all
art of
persuasion ends here, the head has been put back on the body, it stands before us
entire—it has been proven—all the pieces have
been found—the broken thing for an instant entire—oh strange
addition and sum, here is no other further step
to be taken, we have arrived, all the rest now a falling
back—but not yet not now now is all now and
here—the end of the day will not end—will stay with us
this fraction longer—
the hands of it all extending—
& where they would have turned away they wait,
there is nothing for now after this we shall wait,
shall wait that it reach us, this inch of finishing,
in what do you believe it leans out to suggest, slant,
as if to mend it the rip, the longest day of this one year,
not early and not late, un-
earned, unearnable—accruing to nothing, also to no one—how many more will I
see—no—wrong question—old question—how
strange that it be in
truth not now
conceivable, not as a thing-as-such, the personal death of
an I—& the extra millisecond adds itself to this day,
& learns, it too, to interline the cheek of light
given to the widening face
that stares at us holds us excels at
being—stands, dwells, purrs, allows—what can we say to it—standing in it—
quickly it arrives at full, no, not quickly, it
arrives, at fullest, then there it is, the
brim, where the fullness
stocks, pools, feeds, in-
dwells, is a
yes, I look up, I see your face through the window looking up,
see you bend to the
horizon-line,
do not myself look out at it, no, look at you,
at the long life of having-looked as a way of believing
now in your
thinking
face, & how natural the passage of time, and death, had felt to us, & how you
cannot
comprehend the thing you are meant
to be looking
for
now, & you are weighing something, you are out under the sky
trying to feel
the
future, there it is now in your almost invisible
squinting to the visible, & how I feel your heart beat slowly out there in the garden
as we both see the
dove
in the
youngest acacia
& how it is making its nest again this year, how it chose the second ranking
offshoot
again, how the young tree strains at the stake in the wind, & within,
the still head of the mother sitting as if all time
came down to
this, the ringed neck, the
mate’s call from the
roof, & how we both know not to move—me inside at the window, deep summer, dusk,
you in the line of sight of the
bird, & also of the
hawk changing sides of the field as
usual,
& the swallows riding the lowest currents, reddish, seeking their feed.