Before The Solstice Copyright © Richard Whiting 2011

June. The wheat heavy on the stalk
Grey-green, sea-whispers in the breeze.
Sunlight sweeps across the fields
Like a curtain rising
Upon a play which we are certain
Will have a happy ending.

And still the month flows;
Has light to give,
Inches to grow,
Crops to yield;
Its dawn-chorus a rich
Overture to summer.

You did not know that June
Would be your last;
Otherwise you’d have raised your voice
To sing with her choirs;
Taken her flowers
To garland your soul.

In autumn, before the days had shrunk
To their solstice,
You were gone.
Never such darkness,
The ground so wet with tears,
Our blood so cold with ice.

We were never so far from summer;
Never so far from June.