Midsummer Magic

Cherishing the Longest Day

Titania Lying Asleep, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, illustrated by Arthur Rackham

We’ve had a rainy early summer here in the Catskills, but today, the longest day of the year, has dawned as one of the loveliest—the brilliant sun crowning all of life with rays of warmth and pleasure. I want to acknowledge this day with a poem by one of my favorite writers, Linda Gregg:

With her characteristic brilliance, Gregg captures what for most would be an ineffable moment. These lines instantly brought me back to a summer in childhood when I went to camp in the western Catskills. I was almost eleven years old, I’d never been to “the country” and was particularly afraid of bugs. Because the camp was religious, we had to wear white on the Sabbath, which for girls, meant all white dresses with long sleeves. I was uncomfortable in my too-hot frock, but I do remember our mid-afternoon parade on the rural road, small humans cloaked in our milky garb as we processed up the ribbon of asphalt. Wide pastures of green and gold fields unfurled on either side, the throaty bellow of cows bringing my body an unfamiliar feeling of contentment. The light itself had a scent in it, one that sent a subtle thrill through me. I carry that road, those remembered sounds, that fragrance and that sensual exhilaration within me, and that same feeling often surfaces again just around the summer solstice.

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as Titania, Queen of the Fairies, sleeps, Oberon, King of the Fairies, anoints her eyelids with a nectar as he speaks this spell:

What thou seest when thou dost wake
 Do it for thy true love take.
 Love and languish for his sake.
 Be it ounce, or cat, or bear,
 Pard, or boar with bristled hair,
 In thy eye that shall appear
 When thou wak’st, it is thy dear.

His words have her falling in love with the first being she sees upon waking.

So too, on the Summer Solstice, Sun touches the tender crescents of our eyelids and enchants us, and we are swept off our feet by all we see, falling in love with fur, petal and wing. What a tremendous gift. Wishing you all a moment of rapture on this special day, so that your eyes gaze upon nature’s creations with affectionate attention.

Sugarplum Foxglove, aka Witches Gloves, Fairy Thimbles

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