Solstice on the Chop

The tide of the Chop was so high this morning. Where's the moon? Teena said, a soapy bucket in her hand and spotted-winged deer flies clung to her--her chest, her forehead, her arms. She had an orange Teena shirt on, that's the color I know her for know.

She's full, that's why, I said. Er, on Saturday an Sunday anyhow. She brings the tides, right? In'at how it goes?

I figured Teena would know the old folklores and rules that abide the countryside.

She shrugged in return and sat on one of the osprey and duck-stained chairs that she'd initially come to clean. It was about 7:00 or so, she'd been up since the sun was yellow hazy and outside breaking on the land of her home. Delighting. I sat on the pier, legs dangling off water up to my mid-calves. But by now the sun was already fading, mist of grey clouds nebulous and growing, and over my shoulder I heard a dark low rumble. The sky to the west was blackgrey and spanning.

West sky steel like that means storm.

I slipped my clothes off and slid in to the river. Watched the black grow and slithered again and again under and under, and floated again and again on top. I hate how cliche it sounds, but god it was just like silk. She was just so full this morning, the Chop, and welcoming. I knew when I first stepped out the side door and saw her that my body wanted nothing more than to be with hers, melting and swimming, under and under, on top again and again contented to float.

We were ridiculous trying to pull me up and out of there. No ladder and no beach in a tide that high. We have this joke about the old guy who's taken to walking his dog every morning, right about the same time I'm out in my itty bitty night clothes on my knees herbcrafting and worshiping the morning and the sun. Where's the old guy and his dog now?! Teena cackled, throwing a towel around my clumsy nakedness, me hoisting myself chest first on to the pier, thwuck of mud saltwater and sea grass closing the void under me.

The Solstice is coming. Feel it? It was all over everything this morning: the river, the haze of sky, the air. How it all is so meaty feeling, salty, elemental: how the wind is full not just of air, but water and earth, too. Of sky. The tide is growing, meant at once to remind us of the pinnacle of things--ahh great birth and throbbing life--and so meant of course at once to tweak the longing of things, too, for even as great Life comes to peak so she is reminding us, and teaching yet agin: all things come in their time, and pass.

That longing now of what is yet undone, listen quiet to the whisperings in your soul. And be still, be still. There is lots to celebrate amid there. So too the bounties come, the seeds redistribute, all will grow up wild in celebration and thunder, and lay down in surrender to death again.

Amen, yes? Amen amen.