Vox Populi
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Richard Levine: Solstice
We approached the solstice from a Ferris wheel,
crowned and paused between day and night. We held on
to each other and each spoke-like hour, immersed
in beach-tide sounds, briny scents and banking gulls.
Fireflies came on to spangle the dark light, like nocturnal
flowers blooming as quietly as secrets we carry –
like the moon its hidden face, like the tides tugging
our dreams awake, like the sudden aquatic
beauty of whales surfacing to show us what they know
of time and grace. We would love to hold on, live
another hundred years of long and short days, in love
with the sun-hot shapes and sequences our bodies make,
and the ocean calling from shells, while the moon readies
itself to roll up and through its shortest appointed round.
~~~~
Richard Levine, a retired NYC teacher and Vietnam veteran, is the author of Now in Contest, Selected Poems, and Contiguous States. His poetry has appeared in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry column and can be found on the Poetry Foundation and the American Academy of Poets websites.
Copyright 2025 Richard Levine
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These two lines:
“Fireflies came on to spangle the dark light, like nocturnal
flowers blooming as quietly as secrets we carry –
what a delight!
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Yes, a perfect description.
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I’m carried off in memories of soft summer nights. This poem and others that evoke a time of happiness are needed now. Thank you for providing a peaceful moment through this perfect poem.
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This poem itself blooms as quietly and beautifully as the secrets the lovers in it carry. It has a tenderness echoed in its music in lines such as “beach-tide sounds, briny scents and banking gulls” or distant rhymes like face/grace in the second stanza. It calls to my mind specials times with my wife in different settings, such as a bridge in Venice under a full moon, times we held to each other through the wheeling cycles of nature around us. Very beautiful.
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Thanks, Mike. I love this poem. I’m glad it resonates with others.
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