Solstice in Truro

Teaching term done, I keep my laptop shut
A chill in the air runs under weak June sun
Chickadee warbler catbird waxwing—
Morning migrant songs drowned by bulldozer next door
The backing up beeping a constant one note feed
From far off, boundless tides crest onto restless sand
How my grandfather made his way, a refugee from Kyiv
How the new war gathers and opens his voice in me

Copyright © 2023 by Joshua Weiner. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 13, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets. 

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“‘Solstice in Truro’ is one of those poems that just slips out and finds its final form very quickly, in an attempt to respond to my immediate world of sensation. One line led to another, pretty much in the order in which they appear. The emergence of my grandfather in the final lines, and the war in Ukraine, too, was a discovery I wasn’t looking for. I had been reading a lot of Sung and Tang Dynasty poems, classical poems, over the previous few years, mostly in Red Pine’s translations. I think you can hear the influences of line and image in what I wrote.”
—Joshua Weiner