Sol Sistere

The Sunday softball game breaks down
into a storm of rules.
On swings behind the middle school
a girl too young to have a little girl
pushes her daughter with a distracted frown.
A white dog chases a squirrel.

The set sun still refracts across the sky.
We’re getting stoned
One huffenpuffer says that the illusion’s an illusion.
We’re not sure what he means, or why.
Someone says he’d rather get a beer, or else go home.
How quick bright things come to confusion.

In Southern England centuries ago
on one Stonehengian night,
some polytheist – off his gourd on some ferment
of something – decided to pursue an argument,
but was distracted by the slow
progression of some tawdry fairy’s light.

Now we only have our lightning bugs.
We have our summer flings.
We have our drugs.
In every pagan era some midsummer sings
that hope past solstice is hope for fall.
The mother takes her daughter off the swings,
shrill as a bird, light as a doll.


-Jacob Bacharach