Solstice and poetry

I was putzing around the cabin today and NPR had a program of a woman reading poetry mostly about the solstice that's coming next week. A couple of things bothered me about the show. One was  why do people have to write flowery, sappy stuff about this sort of thing?  The other is why can't they wait for the event? I mean, it's still more than a week; why go all out about the solstice this far ahead of time? Perhaps it is part of my lack of success in the news business that I preferred to report what happens, not what I think is going to happen. I don't even like the sportscasters bound to predict the outcome of games and I cheer when they get it wrong especially if a whole panel of them gets it wrong.

The woman reading the poetry spoke almost in a monotone and flubbed words fairly often. Then one of her poems sounded less flowerly, more in tune with the spirituality and the history of the solstice. I listened more closely but I couldn't repeat a line if I had to; except for one. She had been reading the names of authors at the end of each poem. The name at the end of this one stopped me in mid sweep – Patricia Monaghan. My friend, my muse, my co-conspirator, who died of cancer a couple of years ago. It hit me as if she had been reading the poem herself and a flood of her words rushed to my mind. What stood out though is that her words are living on, she has a legacy and I am a witness to her success.

I only wish i could message her and tell her how I heard her poem way out here in the deep Alaska woods. She would have loved that.

A conversation
Monaghan on the solstice