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Summer solstice: longest day, shortest night

 


 

In the Northern Hemisphere, at the UK time of 04:31 am on Monday 21 June, summer solstice commenced – today will be the longest day and the shortest night of the year.


Summer solstice falls between 20 June and 22 June each year, depending on when the sun is directly over the Tropic of Cancer at midday. People say it is the day the sun stops in the sky. It’s the time to let go of the past, and look forward to the future and to start something new.


 

"Solstice Poem" by Margaret Atwood

This is the solstice, the still point

Of the sun, its cusp and midnight,

The year’s threshold

And unlocking, where the past

Lets go of and becomes the future:

The place of caught breath, the door

Of a vanished house left ajar.





 

MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author  of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce  (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

 

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