A pale half-moon hangs still in the daylit sky

A pale half-moon hanging in the sky, winking down on Hackney Downs near my home.

Solstice

I will be on home turf in Yorkshire tomorrow for some Yorkshire nuptuals! The summer is blooming out all over (including as a fever of hay in my nose), and it really is a wonderful English Summer's Day in all its glory!

By coincidence the wedding takes place in a small hamlet in West Yorkshire where, as a child, my extended family had tradition of gathering annually on/around the Winter Solstice to meet pre-Noel and congratulate my Uncle John on his birthday. I will be back again tomorrow in splendid Burley-in-Whafedale, just as we climb to the approach of the Summer Solstice, to attend my friend Lucy's own turning of a landmark in personal time.

I am reminded of the last wedding I attended. Not least by once again looking to the skies, as I did on my bicycle this morning and seeing a pale half-moon hanging up there in sun-lit morning sky - an image of this captivating but not uncommon phenomena inspired the opening image for the poem I wrote for that (last) wedding. The wedding was in Taiwan - a wonderful country, which I should also share of through writing one day - and was the wedding of my very good friend Yu-wei Chang to Yu-Shian.



Here is the poem I wrote for Yu-wei's wedding on 13 December 2009 - just, of course, as the Winter Solstice was in keen approach.




Your gravity, your grace have turned a tide
In me, no lunar power can reverse;

- Jonathan Coe, 'Somniloquy'

A pale half-moon hangs still in the daylit sky
Graceful, beautiful, ephemeral,
Celebratory of all that is Yes.
Its pale possession, the joy in the essence: we're
alive, and love, and can.

I have stood with you among the Art, at the River also,
Against the stand-grained sky
Swoop and sail birds, pepper-sprinkled, and kites.
A kite somersaults in deadly straits above the Ganga calm.

This, is the great river
The source, the journey, our ultimate.
Children cry, running helter-skelter at its side
Holding hands, grasping, clasping at kites.
We are them; and they are us.

And so they watched on
With pride, and with molten hearts
Tears-occasional prickling
As the two breathed
Spoke, and breath again. Together
And made promises of love
And honour and truth and beauty.
And promised. To cherish from this day forward
Tapestry-bound for the fabric of their lives.
Yet, when you love and are loved
You remain to extent immortal.

Come. Do not let go my hand.