Poems for a Midsummer full moon (and other stuff)

I like the word ‘Midsummer’, rather than the more popular (these days) ‘solstice’.

Strange how words fall out of favour, isn’t it?

The word ‘Midsummer’ sounds romantic and burgeoning to me. I imagine ‘The Empress’, holding court, fit to burst with life. It’s a peak, the summit of summer.

The first play I ever saw was ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ too. Manchester Royal Exchange. I loved the fairies and mischief, and every year try to harness the playful energies, hoping to be privy to sprinklings of spell. I hold my cheek to twilight longing to be kissed by Titania, that the extended sunlight will grant my dearest wishes.

Sometimes the fairies feel close, I can almost taste my dreams. I smell potions of fireworks, candy floss, violets, strawberries and warm earth….. Other times, not. Sometimes they are impish like Puck, they delude and trick me.

I think when we are tuned in to our inner child, when hearts and emotional loads are lightest……that’s when our wishes have the best chance of coming true. It’s just a theory, of course.

My energy has been mixed of late, as reflected in these poems. But you can expect the usual manic extremes.😂

I will expand upon them at the end, should anyone want to understand them better.

Midsummer

Midsummer, beguiling dream

Come soothe my path to pink

Pave moon beams with mauve rose petals

Enchant the thoughts I think

Connect me with a higher realm

Where childhood fairies play

Confine all tears to chandeliers

Let Knights in castles stay

Search velvet skies for silver wings

My ailing heart seeks flight

Be true to June, dear Midsummer

Make magic mine tonight

Full Moon

The weight of full moon

Is the heaviest debt

A silver that chills

Freezing hearts with regret

Showcasing each shadow

Suppressing old fight

I wish I could shoot

Like a star out of sight

Oh to aim for new heights

Score fresh earth with my heat

But here I remain

Same old ground, same two feet

A Void

A void again, back to the start

Blank space I used to be

Drawn in by ever tightening reins

Responsibility

I must resist the gallery

Of memories in my head

Commissions of a Neverland

That sneers in mocking red

My heavy eyes rake over why

I had a brief reprieve

The well that drowns my will to live

Cascades for hope to grieve

Devoid again, lacking in faith

Old patience but a flicker

I wait it out, a candle stump

Aflame on blackened wick.

Searchlight

At 3am, I switch it on

The searchlight that I own

Trawling archives, combing ground

For what……I do not know

A missing piece to make it fit

Make sense of what does not

Was there a shred of evidence

A careless heart forgot?

Recalling the detectives

Revisiting each crime

Certain I’ll unearth a clue

I so far failed to find

The hunt drags on

And I grow tired

I put the searchlight down

I will return night after night

Til sanity is found

Running

My head, it went running

Bounding high on lilac morning

Breathless on instinct

A blind and climbing vine

Anger, now hunger

Energy, orange

Thoughts rolling and tumbling

Dangling as stuntmen from cliffs of my chin

Diving fearlessly from lips

I sucked them in, licked them

Tricked myself

Tasting wet time in the seat of my mouth

Luscious and precious

Awash with the fresh

I raced with ideas that were younger and fitter

Nothing could stop me, cap or discourage

Left behind jeers of apathy, misery

Triumphed to cheers that roared as loud foam

Digging hot heels into tracks of bleak dawns

I blistered in conquest

Bleeding

Succeeding

Midsummer - This poem is pretty much what I wrote about in the introduction. Every solstice, I try and harness the spirit of fruition. I watch the sun flood fields rich with grass and animal life. Each one once a seed. It’s wondrous to remember all a single seed can become with the right alchemy and conditions.

Full Moon - I struggle with full moons. I ‘know’ I’m supposed to use them to maximise my creativity, but often, they make me feel a bit shaky, exposed, vulnerable. Maybe you can relate?

A Void - Sometimes you feel empty, full of nothing. You feel close to no-one, separate and insular………yet you have to ‘show up’ - whatever ‘showing up’ is to you. Maybe it’s taking care of someone, maybe it’s a job……you’re on auto pilot, your physical body is present, but you’re a functional zombie. You are a void, devoid of feeling, you bite your lip or shake your hand just to ‘check’ you’re real, that the numbing pins and needles is purely emotional. And your body confirms your fear. Yes - still there…..but not there. A performing ghost in your own life.

Searchlight - Do you ever have those 3am moments when you have to rake over everything that went wrong, pick it apart? When you think you’ll examine ‘the evidence’ just one more time so you can lay it to rest? But 3am is never when you’re at your most rational is it? So my advice is……..don’t.

Running - One day a couple of weeks back, I woke up and it really did feel like my head was running - in a good way. It was on a beach with palominos. It was giddy and nothing could catch its speed. My demons tried (and failed) to mount it, but it was too lithe, too fast. Thoughts were fine sand. I could cast them to the wind or mould them to my liking. There was nowhere that my mind couldn’t run that day, it was fluid, penetrating every rock in its way, the stones were porous, the sea was just a series of waves to catch.

Oh for more of those days!

Those are the sort of days I wish for all of you. Let them daisy chain into weeks, months years……. 🩷

*Images from pixabay.