Summer Solstice at Stonehenge

The Heel stone marks the rise 
The crown of the year
The sun in its meridian
Held momentarily clear;
Statistically recorded
Longest day of light
Waning days till Yule
Bale fires alight.

Mystic ritual performed,
Ancient Norse procession,
The light of Earth’s existence,
Mysteries of succession.

The sun reaches its zenith
Upon these ancient stones;
Our planet in quiet alignment
In beauty is honed;
Connects something intangible
Deep in DNA
Responding to those questions
Of Neolithic way.
Older than we can fathom,
None can reason how?
Spirituality reawakened
To ask the question now.

The orbit explained with physics
Around this central star;
The planetary alignment mathematical
Seeks order out of chaos
To be predictable.

Questions still unanswered
Evoke such mystery
Of time long discussion
Summer Solstice agreed
A spectacle indeed.

Whatever belief or none
Put science and faith together;
From this our wisdom comes;
The power of our Earth
Is drawn from things above,
But the greatest thing of all
It was made with love.

Ruth Partridge

Ghost routes

A narrow length of grey 
Disappears into black
Between high hedges
Well aligned.
Ferns are arched
With secrets held
In spectral stillness.
A Breath of wind
Casts
elicit conversations
Between the leaves,
Murmurs
Of time forgotten
years
By long gone travellers
Whose spectres linger there
Above the moss
And creeping ivy
That twists around
The gnarled trunks of trees.
Haunting stillness
Envelopes all and
Takes me in to feel
And breathe that history.