{"id":862,"date":"2025-12-21T22:42:03","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T05:42:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gloryjune.com\/wordpress\/?p=862"},"modified":"2025-12-21T22:48:56","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T05:48:56","slug":"notes-on-the-sun-turning-around-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gloryjune.com\/wordpress\/?p=862","title":{"rendered":"Notes on the Sun Turning Around Today"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Yesterday, sunny and not too chilly,was a good day for a long pre-solstice walk at Falls Park in Pendleton, fortified with hot chocolate from one of my favorite coffeehouses, Falls Perk. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I bowed in great respect to the heron, who was busily fishing\u2013with great success, I might add. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I walked into a scrum of gleaming ducks, who were clearly starving, or so they said when they saw I had food. Likely these were the same babies I had fed last spring. They were scrambling all over my feet just as they had then. Heading upstream toward the bridge, I saw another heron, who was uninterested in posing and glided off in all its magnificence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Crossing the bridge, I walked on into the snowless but very wintery woods where a cardinal flashed me in his brilliant coat and a deer leaped across my path. I breathed deeply of the fresh brisk air. A poem I’d composed decades ago popped into my head. It had been\u00a0 written in February, but obviously, what was once seasonal is rapidly changing. These are the ending lines:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is beauty in neutrality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brown woods and white swamp <\/p>\n\n\n\n

and invisible hands in the breezes <\/p>\n\n\n\n

that guide my wandering way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Darkness fell with a thud, as it does this time of year. Time to leave. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The road through the park crosses an old metal bridge, now festooned with lights that filled my heart with joy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Solstice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now the sun will turn around<\/p>\n\n\n\n

or so they said in the long ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before it did I went to do my outside chores,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

collected water, checked to see<\/p>\n\n\n\n

if the bees were bundled enough, the sparrows fed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chilly today but for the sun,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

which is fast descending <\/p>\n\n\n\n

and it is only four.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Snowdrops poked their noses up last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How foolish that seems<\/p>\n\n\n\n

but they will bravely bloom,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and live although frozen,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and dance in the wind for weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If that is not a lesson<\/p>\n\n\n\n

to see us through,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

what is?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, sunny and not too chilly,was a good day for a long pre-solstice walk at Falls Park in Pendleton, fortified with hot chocolate from one of my favorite coffeehouses, Falls Perk. I bowed in great respect to the heron, who … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,3,31],"tags":[32],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gloryjune.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gloryjune.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gloryjune.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gloryjune.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gloryjune.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=862"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/gloryjune.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":871,"href":"http:\/\/gloryjune.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862\/revisions\/871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gloryjune.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gloryjune.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gloryjune.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}