This week’s poem, W. Kent Olson’s “After the Solstice,” places us tangibly in the season. I love this poem’s pensive forward momentum, its attention to hill and silhouette as the sun descends, and the depth of the “starless solace” it conjures of the darkness.

Olson was named a 2021 Maine Literary Awards finalist for his short work “Common Cause and Other Poems” and, along with his co-authors, was a finalist for the 2017 John N. Cole Award for Maine-themed nonfiction for their book “Acadia National Park: A Centennial Celebration.” Olson is the retired president and CEO of Friends of Acadia.

Poets, please note that submissions to Deep Water are open through the end of the year. Deep Water is especially eager to share poems by Black writers, writers of color, Indigenous writers, LGBTQ+ writers, and other underrepresented voices. You’ll find a link to submit in the credits below.

After the Solstice
By W. Kent Olson

A slice past the winter solstice
in these hills, the sun does not
so much set as subside. Actual
sundown time is many minutes
after the oblique final ray scrapes
the bread loaf mass of opaque ridge
I see out my window but only through
the benign sieve of leafless trees,
an amphitheater of latent light.
Foliated, the woods would not give
but hide both skyline silhouette
and our closest star, as dark
descends fast to nullify and subsume
the shadow last cast. From afar,
what most I inwardly remark
is the run north the coquette
sun, flirting with the peak, makes
across the crown before it dead-
certain ends both mountain and day,
bringing forth the starless solace
of a vast obsidian night.

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “After the Solstice,’” copyright 2023 by W. Kent Olson, appears by permission of the author. Submissions to Deep Water are open now and through the end of the year. For more information, go to mainewriters.org/deep-water.

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