Summer Solstice

Today is the summer solstice. Today is the longest day of 2012. There is only one.

Today is about this:

Honoring the worthy dead. It's about two markers that say someone great was here. It's about laying the stones beside Jordan.

It's two windows down and warm air flooding in a 15-year-old Jeep. It's the sound of tires on asphalt. It's the on-off, on-off, on-off echo of a passing vehicle bouncing off the stone rails of a little bridge over a creek. It's the nothingness of the sound passing through the railing gaps.

It's the smell of burnt fireworks. It's the rapid popping of firecrackers and the image of several boys shoeless in the backyard daring one another to light more next time

It's face to face, close up and swaying to no music except the chirps of crickets and frogs. Its one set of bare feet on two feet tied up in leather shoes.

It's hot and sweating even as the water of a shower cascades and swirls and plunges down the tub drain.

It's a dog barking, always, somewhere in the night. Sometimes here.

Sometimes there.

It's the green glow of a cat's eyes as he crouches in imagined secrecy at the road's edge. It's his motive for roaming while the rest of the world sleeps. It's his prowling, working his beat.

It's orange lightning flashing away to the east above this quiet valley. It's veiled like the roaming eye of Sauron, piercing and menacing, but distant and powerless to reach a hand this far.

It's purple thistles on the side of a national highway.

It's the perfect song:

"Your mama always said we had nothing to lose
so we danced on a street corner.
Oh, Caroline,
heartbroken hard times never got us down.
Walking the same line
through every shady Southern town.
Hand in hand, your arm round mine,
Caroline, you do just fine."

It's knowing that somewhere out in the dark, there's a barn with horses in it, asleep.

It's knowing there's an old wooden house somewhere, and there's an old man sitting on the porch drinking a beer from a glass and thinking about a beautiful girl and a party under white lights strung like spokes from an old Oak that was already ancient 50 years ago.

It's a hundred-year-old potato storage cabin woven into the very fabric of a patriarchal homestead.

It's remembering all those who came before and not looking past those who are here now.

It's echoes off of a green mountain, as life is suddenly clearly only an echo of the lives that have already been lived. It's belonging.

It's living right now, the smells, the sights, the noises, the memories, the land, the stars, the moon. It's home, and it's never as certain as it is today. It's in the heart on the summer solstice.

Que Sera, Sera.