First Day of Summer 2023

Today marks midsummer, the first day of summer, the summer or estival solstice.  This is our longest day of the year, where in the states, depending on your location, you can have 13 to 16 hours of daylight today.

It's that day marking summer magic, the time of enjoying the outdoors, when it's not scorching hot.  Of relaxing on a back porch.  Kids playing in the yard.  Pick up games, camps, and camping.  Of travel.  Of barbecues and cookouts.  Of pools and lakes, rivers and streams.

While I will be indoors most of today, I thought I would celebrate with an appropriate poem.

Hope you get to enjoy the day!

Shine on, O moon of summer. 

Shine to the leaves of grass, catalpa and oak, 

All silver under your rain to-night. 

An Italian boy is sending songs to you to-night from an accordion. 

A Polish boy is out with his best girl; they marry next month; 

    to-night they are throwing you kisses. 

An old man next door is dreaming over a sheen that sits in a 

    cherry tree in his back yard. 

The clocks say I must go—I stay here sitting on the back porch 

drinking 

    white thoughts you rain down. 

    Shine on, O moon, 

Shake out more and more silver changes. 

Back Yard, Carl Sandburg, The Chicago Poems, 1916