Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

 

Archive

 

Volume 11 Number 2, August 2010

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JUNE 21, 2010

 

the beeches and the oaks are dense with leafage

they have made use of the rains and the undergrowth threatens

to run riot along the manicured grounds of Frederiksborg Castle

while the gravel paths are drying out in the timely sunshine

on this astronomically the longest day of the year, though midsummer

must wait another two days for its bonfires and song and witches

 

it is the eighty-first time in my mother's life the sun and our planet meet

at this angle but far from the eighty-first time the event is met

by warm weather (this is Denmark) though her hands felt a little cold

to the touch asleep in the hospital bed, her forehead too when I kissed it

inside her an incurable growth has taken over and her time is approaching

midsummers will keep returning and so will she - as we all must

 

- P.K. Brask