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The Longest Day

from Band of Bards by Kimwei

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lyrics

This is the second collectively written poem by my Band of Bards. The words were created during Tuesday evening's creative writing workshop, co-hosted by Tim King (current Bard of Exeter and long time organiser of Exeter’s poetry open Mic, Taking the Mic, and Exeter’s poetry Slam). Contributors were Sovereign Jones, Clare Morris and Jen Pill.

THE LONGEST DAY

I always associate summer with...
long grass caressed by sunlight, standing tall and proud
birds showing me I’m still alive
the silence of growth underneath my fingernails
a warm embrace.
The rough buff of sand, on skin, in sardine sandwiches
Walking into the salted sea in jelly shoes, shivering with goosebumps until we plunge under, as though an invisible trap door has given way beneath our feet and the water comes like a hundred hand slap.

The summer solstice has just gone by and we celebrated with the lemony fizz and swizzle and giggle of G and Ts, strawberries (heart-shaped like a Valentine), ‘til the sun rolled down the hill to winter. We watched it from the bridge. Behind us was the moon and there was a rainbow for a brief moment. Every possible colour ran through us until we were alive with it, each of us vibrating within our own prism.

The longest day ended and the next day began.

The Sun came out and reminded me that I am not alone, I remembered how happy people can be – so arbitrary really - everything seeming more bearable when there’s a golden light shining down. The sky can get so blue sometimes that I think I’m inside a glass bauble, that the whole world fell away in the night and I was chosen to be plucked from it and transported to the land of perfect summer, where there is no time for squelching jelly shoes, seaweed around the ankles, or queuing at the fish n chip shop until we get heatstroke.

This summer I will definitely fall in love. I’ll walk barefoot on grass in the delicious shade, watch three buzzards circling woods beyond Yonder Meadow and the sky clear, blue, still, drinkable. We’ll have barbecues that send the dog spin, spin, spinning and come sunset we’ll sit on the bridge again, our prism bodies ready for every colour as the sky turns from turmeric yellow to bluebell purple and bell pepper red, before dropping off the edge of this glass bauble earth.

Yet winter rolls nearer so slowly we won’t notice the days getting shorter. My promise is that I will hold on to the light as I quietly, secretly, unpick the weave of years that have crept around me, tying me into this shape, this life. Maybe I can subtly touch the knots, loosen them, listening for when the daylight yearns to return. They say “you will hear it in the back of your mind, like the memory of an echo calling far, far away in a voice that seems so familiar and yet so distant, just a hush - an eyelash on the skin”.

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from Band of Bards, released May 26, 2021

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Kimwei Exeter, UK

Pre-order Anthems For Change at kimwei.com !

Where is the soundtrack for the climate revolution? I believe it is down to us all to make it. This year I've teamed up with folk musicians Chris Dance, Lisa Rowe & Anita Clarinet to make the songs of tomorrow’s history: music that births change - a lush landscape of vocal harmonies, guitar, strings & woodwind to surround and transform you. ... more

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