Solstice

Solstice

When there's singing, loud and bright,

In a major key,

You're alive;

The weather's light;

We're sipping by the sea.

When I'm hooked on a buzzing,

Drunken symphony,

You're alive

And this warm night

We're all here

And happy.

Your skin is paper for the wind,

Your papers have been kept.

Your ash spelled out a final word,

And all your friends have wept.

We listened to the watchers pace,

We heard their dull steps fall.

Once more, they lit your blackened oil,

As it spluttered in its bowl.

Again, until the lamp had died,

And we blinked within the gloom;

Until the draining of the tide,

And the setting of the moon.

How this year was made so wide,

By the season of your doom.

Now faint, the solstice sun aligns

With the doorway of your tomb.