Poet and choreographer Annie Kahane grew up swimming in rivers in Calistoga and Laytonville. In the midst of a very hot summer, a friend asked Annie to write a poem for a solstice party. As she began to reflect on the meaning of summer, Annie found herself challenged by her poetry.
This is Annie Kahane's Moment.
I wanted to write something that would celebrate summertime. It was in the middle of the drought, and I was having a hard time celebrating summertime because all the creek beds were dry, and all the swimming holes that I grew up swimming in were low and you couldn't go swimming.
If you grow up in Northern California, it's very temperate, the seasons are pretty mild. But even so, can you imagine living in a world where there was literally no change in what it felt like from December to July?
We frame memory in terms of a period of time when something occurred. We think about whether it was cold, if we were indoors, if we were laying in the sun. And so the idea that those things might be lost is what this poem is about.