We celebrated my husband’s birthday with two friends on an October afternoon just before twilight changed the world and plunged us into the dark of a complete lockdown that carried on right through the night of long winter months.
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The landscapes of my external world became smaller, restricted, whilst those of my internal world expanded into poetry. I am certain that the beauty of the changing light and the sea outside my window played a considerable part in keeping me working and keeping me sane.

AT DAWN AND TWILIGHT
THOSE MAGIC IN-BETWEEN HOURS
WHEN THE WORLD CHANGES

Iona Jenkins

This year, the summer solstice has blessed us with two glorious days of brilliant sunshine. Now in the late afternoon of the 22nd June, I am relaxing on my balcony after a trip to the annual Victorian Fayre in Llantwit Major. I have enjoyed the bustle of the crowds and the street entertainment but now, around 5pm, I have entered a peaceful haven, where the air is totally still, where a strange silence hangs over the ocean and the garden at the back of this apartment block. Even the gulls sail by without a sound and everyone seems to have gone out with the tide. This solstice has an extraordinary quality of light which invokes that feeling I sometimes experience of sitting in a painting, like a figure on a sunlit canvas with an artist painting the sky and the sea in several delicate shades of blue and grey, with clouds as downy and motionless as sleeping swans. This masterpiece has an atmosphere of rare calm that brings contentment. The days will gradually get shorter now but even so there is still the promise of a whole summer ahead of us and time outside.

The wheel of the year has turned through the spring equinox, the clocks have been put forward and the light has changed. The World is renewed and we have a chance to move on if we are so inclined.
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I open up my senses to warmer air, increased birdsong, the feeling of growth beneath my feet, as our mother the Earth gives birth to a bright abundance of flowers like light bursting skyward back towards the sun that first warmed their seeds. It’s a time of renewed hope, of creative and personal possibility, responsibility towards the planet that sustains us, a time to begin new projects and to look forward to the promise of  celebration that summer brings. I for one, have been inspired to write several poems and to write down headings for a new creative writing project that is neither fiction nor poetry and which I hope will be a quick flowing stream by the time of the summer solstice. More about this later if everything goes to plan and the muse is good to me.