June 2025 - Sitting Out the Solstice Under the Japanese Maple Tree
/Once again, the summer solstice approaches. Five years ago, when this month’s featured poem was written, our world was masked and socially distanced; a vaccine for the virus which held us in its thrall was still a dream. George Floyd had just died. A climate apocalypse loomed. Sadly, today, many of us are reminded of the French saying, plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose: The more things change, the more they stay the same. Yet, the hope we kindled into action then remains as vital now as ever. We must, as Heather Corbally Bryant writes, “…start again/from where we are just now.” It is what nature does; it is what we must do if we wish to affect lasting change.
Sitting Out the Solstice Under the Japanese Maple Tree
by Heather Corbally Bryant
Sitting beneath green feathered leaves
with their cutout shapes —
Underneath a canopy of grace — a cooling welcome
today when it’s ninety degrees in the shade,
The experience of being — the sign out front says
Black lives matter today, now, always —
Beside slow turtle crossing, slow children playing,
the places we drive by —
Both haunted and tainted by our lives — we could
spend a lifetime redoing everything —
Feathered green leaves casting dappled shadows
on my bare white legs sitting beside
The farm stand selling garlic scapes, strawberry,
and kale — where do we plant our shoots
And cuttings—it is the beginning of grace to
retrace our roots—though we can never
Recoup the shootings, the lies, the violence—
beneath their canopy of desire, flying on
The wings of hope and deed, we can learn from
this new beginning, breathing the grace
Of longing and belonging, we can only start again
from where we are just now.
Heather Corbally Bryant teaches in the writing program at Wellesley College. She is the author of eleven books of poetry and is at work on a memoir about discovering her biological family—entitled Remarkable: A Memoir. “Sitting Out the Solstice Under the Japanese Maple Tree” was first published in the plein air chapbook, Refuge.