The still point of midsummer’s rising sun
Brings Gaia’s promise of good things to come.
With warmth and rain, the ripening ears of wheat
Ensure at least most Britons have enough to eat.
Our ancestors sought solace from their fears
With Bronze Age bardic rituals and prayers.
Though we may join them, we delude ourselves.
Our harvest sits on supermarket shelves,
Dispatched by air from Egypt, Kenya or Peru,
Covered in plastic, sprayed, all fresh and new,
Drenched with carcinogens, releasing CO2,
While forests flame and arctic ice sheets shrink,
Six billion hungry humans teeter on the brink.
And so we call on angels and the Source
Of all creation for forgiveness, in remorse.
It could be that the cycle of destruction ends.
Maybe there’s yet some time to make amends.
Perhaps our anxious hopes are not forlorn
And through the turmoil, a new age is being born.
Sharifin Gardiner wrote this poem after attending a Solstice Ceremony.