A Summer Queen Speech by OR Melling

What a joy it was to be called to the royal dais by the ivy-covered magic of Green Man. And how close did I come to declining the honour! This has been a hard summer for me and I did not wish to weep before you in the sunshine.

Yet here I am, dangling over a precipice, holding onto a thread from a spider’s web, prepared to utter words like a bedraggled sibyl. You don’t need to know the tale of my travails. Only think back to your own dark times which you have so bravely survived; for you cannot have lived long upon this earth if your heart has not been broken at least a few times by now.

So here I hang, crown of flowers askew, feet blistered from that last patch of nettles, and I’m admiring the view. Below me, through the breaks in the clouds, I catch glimpses of a fair green country; gentle hills and winding roads and smoke curling from the chimneys of stone cottages thatched with peacock plumes. In the distance gleam the spires of a castle. Is that you, standing by the lakeshore, waving to me? You hold up a banner embroidered with fiery words. Be of good courage. All is well.

Look, there, in a hospital ward, one of my dearest friends has just given birth after thirty-three hours of agonizing labour. Her arms cradle a beautiful boy with Tibetan eyes. I adore him. Oh, how I adore him. And over there, another friend, not long recovered from his victorious battle with alcohol. Only a few days ago he lifted the blackwood flute to his lips, remembering his love of music. Listen to this. I wrote it this morning. And there’s my own shadow, sitting in my brother-in-law’s jeep, gazing out at the grey Irish sea, mourning my losses as the sky wept with me. I swear by all that lives and breathes, this is no literary conceit, but even as he said to me you have a right to be the rain did ease, shafts of light broke through, and before our very eyes a radiant bow arched across the heavens.

Now the sun disperses the clouds below me. A more expansive view comes into sight: life’s panorama, songs of joy and songs of catastrophe, people falling and people rising. Greater than pain is the soul’s urge to go beyond suffering, to struggle out of the chrysalis and be reborn.

Oh! I just felt it! The first pangs! Hope’s dagger piercing flesh and bone. Here they come! Slicing through the membrane of anguish: the tips of wings. More violently now, almost tearing me apart, they emerge crushed and sticky, trembling and shuddering, into the sunlight. A swan’s span of feathered strength unfurls, white sails flapping and fluttering in the air, blinding bright against the blue sky.

I let go of the thread from the spider’s web. Soaring upward, ever onward and upward, I ride the warm sweet solar winds, singing out to the realm.

Summer is here! Rejoice! Summer is here!