Joyous Summer Solstice

Today is the summerest of solsti. It marks the official beginning of Summer as determined by the celestial hallelujahs up top.

Sitting on my porch last night, staring up into a heavily silhouetted black tree and leaf line against the clear of the night sky I could see with burning detail the three major varieties of constellations.

First and most predominant of them all was the man in the moon, staring back at me with the bloated depression of Strong Sad, his silver sheen partially eclipsed by the slightest loss of the full moon, creating a distorted presence difficult to focus my eyes on. I felt nearly blinded, as intensely as looking at the sun. The long streams that pour off of all of the night’s lights reached out in every direction and I wondered if everyone can see these tendrils of light and dance. Or perhaps they’re limited only to those of us with smudgy spectacles.

The moon was very bold last night, taking it’s place in the coming celebration of all things celestial, and the stars twinkled serenely behind and around it, almost as if they knew their place. The light pollution–defying gravity up over the tree’s tops and pinking the deepest blue midnight–prevented the majority of the stars from coming out to play, but I couldn’t bring myself to feel as though the hundreds of lights lining every city street were all that inferior to the ones so high above the atmosphere. The moon reflected silver sadness, the stars twinkled golden reverence and the streetlights�-perhaps because of their man-made nature or merely out of a simple case of the get me downs�-burned up orange and defiantly into the sky.

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