on solstice hill

It's rash, hopping out of the train halfway home, still lugging the guitar, already tired and ready for home and quiet.

Still, I am pretty resolved. It's the longest day. I want to remember the sun the way it is here, lingering, making summer evenings that love you, take hours saying goodbye.

So we follow the fence a longer way than we thought we had to. Far off ahead, the sky is black - not the direction we want to look anyway. The wind picks up. Finally, the footbridge, red against the leaves glowing above and the tracks glowering below. Past the joggers, into the woods, we are mostly alone.

The light: oh! I want to drink it; mingled with the air, it's a golden wine, rich and strong. On the trees, it disorients, dazzles. Looking up, we see kaleidoscopic gilded green, the threat of black up ahead, the depth of the blue still visible in the broken clouds. I glance to the side into a dream I once had, or maybe a dream I dreamed of having so long ago I've forgotten. I still can't remember what it was about, but it must have been a good story.

We take a shortcut and are brought up short on the hill's far shoulder. Two rainbows climb above the rose garden below, fragile and wan and all the more lovely for that. We stare and try to find words, only briefly.

This time, we take the stairs, exerting ourselves for the sake of speed, and it pays: we're at the top with twenty minutes or more to spare, and we spare it, breathing deeply, sucking at the wind that shoves and prods and ruffles us, looking. We soak in the east side, then head a few steps to the west, see what the far-off sun has done with the blankets of clouds hanging, it seems, just overhead, just out of reach, a painting done with God's brush on His living room wall.

It lasts a long while. I say once how I feel, and that is more than enough.

The black in the east catches up to us. I try an umbrella for a bit, then give up and give in to being pelted by the chill summer storm. On the verge of letting go, heading downhill and homeward, we see the sun's farewell, the last gap between cloud and horizon, invisible until now, with all the desperate fury of the last light reaching out to us through it.

Knowing every moment that we need to go, we walk to the west tower, see the city settling into the twilight, watch the gold and red fade into memory, the sky fade into cool satisfied dark, even as it keeps pouring on us.

Soaked and giddy, we start back down, trying to hurry without losing hold of the ground, delighted soggy fools. All the way home, though, I feel I've been watered.

On the way down, I mentioned the dream, and she smiled at me.