Neile Graham
Wearing Nothing But The Midnight Sun
—Summer Solstice, Orkney
History is traditionally blind
to these movements of ordinary people
because it is dominated by culture and artifacts
I read these words on
the shortest night of the year
in a place where the sky never darkens but dims
we’ve spent this day circling the 30 remaining
stones standing to shape the Ring of Brodgar
learning the time-washed year-carved edges
of each stone
I showed you the Viking graffiti
we followed how sun’s line
pierced the haze breaking
on cloud-washed stone
grey, grey-green, golden and whorled
now it’s night but the dimming sunlight still
pours into the attic room we’re given to sleep in
a room dressed mostly in pink
ruffled wherever a ruffle could go
our hostess named Venus truly for real
it’s our anniversary it’s the small dusky hours of solstice
your mouth on my mouth
my hand slides down the
primitive terrain of your back
we ring and circle each other
our purpose ancient, lost to history
mysterious as stone
tonight I imagine ghosts
lovers walking the Ring of Brodgar
learning the wear of each stone
while they lose themselves
in the silk of skin on earth on stone
and then on each other
tasting one another as we do
touch wakening the powers of the skin
the fingertip’s whorls pressing
into the turf of each other’s flesh
pulses beating in their ears
these movements of ordinary people
their cries like gulls
as lost in the instant they name each other
created anew by each other’s fingers
bones and muscles lost to time
we name ourselves
0 Winner, Conferation Poets Prize 2002
Arc 47, Winter 2001
Arc 47, Winter 2001
