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.