Sunday, Summer Solstice, Bellingham Washington
Dawn came so early that the dew didn’t have time to settle. It still hovers, invisible, in the air for yards High above the trees, the morning light shifts Hues of blue rolling in like waves. Sometimes white, sometimes as dark as the afternoon sky. This morning was the longest morning of the year. And now the sun has risen to its peak, shining fully on my forehead as I emerge from the forest. The trees end abruptly at the edge of a cliff, facing northwest. And two stories down, a stream empties silently into the sand. I’d followed that stream down through the foothills till it disappeared into a mossy, rocky hole. It had filled the morning forest with its wet clatter Until it ducked into the earth And now, below, it has emerged a silent solemn slick. The tide went out this morning and the stream drools across the mud flats. The shore has retreated, allowing the stream to wander freely, To create its own bed, once again, As it meanders toward the quietly lapping waves From the cliff I see where the tide has deposited mud and sand in languorous lines Seaweed has settled into cowlicks, like a sleeping child’s head. The sun is so bright, so high, it should have burned away this haze. Is it still morning? The haze has no boundaries. I search for the edge of the ocean, but it fades so gradually into white that my eyes keep slipping up to the yellow sun The horizon is softened by this haze The boundaries between earth, sky and sound are separated Light seeps between them A passage to freedom The haze veils the islands across the sound from me They are so translucent I could walk right through them The sun will stay above me, facing me all day. This is the day when light lays bare all the shadowed things Every angle is exposed and truth is seen. Even deep in the forest behind me, sun light will crack through the web of leaves to shine into crevices that only see light once a year. Before me, the sun brightens the glassy ocean. For a moment, a humid gust of wind pushes Green salty smell of seaweed up to me. Freedom is the light that allows all this to be seen. Today the sun will heat the rocks on this cliff For longer they’ve been warm all year. Today sunlight expands the air, lengthens the wind, and blues the heavens. The moon makes the water in this sound rise and fall, but it’s the sun that takes the water and spreads it out into the sky. On the cliff face, Fat yellow blossoms are bursting Popping their pollen into the breeze. Down in the flats, Clams spit up into the air from their cramped muddy rooms Gulls glide around each other, then stop and flap With awkward fleshy feet dangling, Shrieking at fish in the shallows. That single yellow ball Still hanging up there. Has no time passed since I arrived at this cliff? The sun has not moved. So many thoughts exposed by the sun So much activity Freedom is allowing all this activity to occur The sun is free because it allows everything touched by its light to simply be. To exist in its own way. The sun moves around the earth, striving to touch everything. Everything touched by the sunlight is free And with that freedom comes a choice To recognize that freedom Or to try to shade away or enclose it. But from this cliff I only see that which the sun is touching and the shadows these things make.