All posts by Dave Clark

Poems, Solstice, Summer

The Longest Day, Communing with Nature and Other Diatribes

The longest day of the year is not until Tuesday, June 21st – but I will be celebrating it in a couple of ways today. First, there is the Revels North Summer Solstice Festival – a free event that takes place in Norwich that usually draws 1000 or more participants. There’s singing and dancing, food and crafts. Most of all there’s an awareness of the season and a sharing of the awareness of the moment through song with a bunch of friends. Thanks Revels for making it all possible!

Tonight, there’s a summer party at Jo Jo’s, which is another type of communion for me. There’s only a few things that top getting on stage and playing extended jams into the night with my rock star brothers. There’s a place we go where I swear we converse. Not with words, but with notes and volume dynamics. The audience picks up on the conversation too, and becomes a bigger part of the sharing. Together we channel the energy back out to the universe.

Helen and I sing in the St. James Church choir in Woodstock, so we go to church A LOT. Every Sunday, I spend time trying to figure out what communion is all about. Today, I will commune with my friends with a stomp on the ground and a shout to the sky. That’s how I’ll celebrate the height of the summer solstice. I’ll leave church to tomorrow.

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I live in the house by the side of the road with Helen. Hi, my name is Dave Clark and I consider myself lucky for the most part. But more about that later. . . Our house contains our hopes and dreams. Maybe its because we both work at home and we are together pretty much all the time. Maybe its because we are the first house that you see when you enter Quechee Vermont from the south, and generally people smile when they see us out on the front porch playing music, or working in the front yard. Its quite an affirmation when people smile and wave and they dont know who you are. I don’t want to sound trite or shallow, but in our case the state of our house symbolizes how successfully we live.

I wrote a song called “Friend of Man” based on the Sam Walter Foster poem that Helen published. It goes like this:

In my house by the side of the road.
I watch the world go by.
There are teachers, lawyers, mothers, theives
Some are low and some are high.

I would not trade my life with them
I’ll just do the best I can.
In my house by the side of the road
I’ll be a friend of man.

In my house by the side of the road
by the side of the road of life
I have friends who smile with the joy of hope
and others who live in strife.

I do not judge between right and wrong
among this merry band.
In my house by the side of the road,
I’ll be a friend of man.

In my house by the side of the road
I will live my whole life long.
With friends dropping in from near and far
we will fill it with happy song.

I’ll never take for granted
where my new life began.
In my house by the side of the road
I’ll be a friend of man.