Summer Solstice

The words following were written by experts, waxing far more eloquent than I could ever be on anything, not least the topic of summer and the solstice. South-western Oklahoma summers, for my northern English blood, are not much fun - they're simply "too flippin' hot!" Still, though, for any passing readers who enjoy the heat - "have at it" (as they say) and please take my share as well!

"The spring rains woke the dormant tillers, and bright green shoots sprang from the moist earth and rose like sleepers stretching after a long nap. As spring gave way to summer, the bright green stalks darkened, became tan, turned golden brown. The days grew long and hot. Thick towers of swirling black clouds brought rain, and the brown stems glistened in the perpetual twilight that dwelled beneath the canopy. The wheat rose and the ripening heads bent in the prairie wind, a rippling curtain, an endless, undulating sea that stretched to the horizon."
Rick Yancey, The Infinite Sea



"Hot weather opens the skull of a city, exposing its white brain, and its heart of nerves, which sizzle like the wires inside a lightbulb. And there exudes a sour extra-human smell that makes the very stone seem flesh-alive, webbed and pulsing."
Truman Capote, Summer Crossing



Heat, ma’am! it was so dreadful here, that I found there was nothing left for it but to take off my flesh and sit in my bones.
Sydney Smith, Lady Holland’s Memoir



It is Summer, it is the solstice
the crowd is
cheering, the crowd is laughing
in detail
permanently, seriously
without thought.
William Carlos Williams