Summer Solstice 2022
Con/Jur/d, 6/21/2022

Every solstice
for a little while
felt like forever
wrote a poem
to mark the oc-
casion, “You
need to settle
down” he said

and we did 
new kinds
of comfort
present them-
selves, selves
proliferate, flowers
in the field, stars in
the sky, stones in the
cemetery, not who we
were then, coffee to coffee
beer to beer, smoke to smoke

We return to this body
as it begins to change
the long-promised fin-
ale heaves into view 

I think today, we’ll take comfort
in old movies, the tension between
a sullen sky and our aching joints
grounded in the blessed cycle
the longest day and shortest night
vow their counterpoint long before

and forever 
after.