Happy Solstice, Birthday

Cara was born in the dead center of the twentieth century, Solstice day, 1950. How cool is that? If you like significant dates, you couldn't do much better. Stacey bought her a Great Bowl O Fire to celebrate her birthday and the Solstice this year. You should have seen Cara's face when I pulled up to deliver it.

Tomorrow, the days start getting shorter again… but tonight, I think there's going to be a pretty wild women's gathering around the ring of stones in Cara and Stacey's back 40.

One of my favorite things about working in the arts is creating work that helps people articulate their dreams, passions and beliefs.

I would have gone on at great length about this when I was a poet, but my friend Britt sent me a poem by Mary Oliver this morning that covers it nicely. And the photo speaks for itself as well.

The Rapture

All Summer
    I wandered the fields
        That were thickening
            Every morning,

Every rainfall,
    With weeds and blossoms
        With the long loops of shimmering, and the extravagant –

Pale as flames they rose
    And fell back,
        Replete and beautiful –
            That was all there was –

And I too
    Once or twice, at least,
        Felt myself rising,
            My boots

Touching suddenly the tops of weeds,
    The blue and silky air –
        Listen,
            Passion did it,

Called me forth,
    Addled me,
        Stripped me clean
            Then covered me with the cloth of happiness –

I think there is no other prize,
    Only rapture the gleaming,
        Rapture the illogical the weightless –

Whether it be for the perfect shapeliness
    Of something you love –
        Like an old german song –
            Or of someone –

Or the dark floss of the earth itself,
    Heavy and electric.
        At the edge of sweet sanity open
            Such wild, blind wings.

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