The Flaming Banner

The bright cloth flutters like a breath in the breeze, a flag of flame in the solstice sun, like an arrow shot into the dawn, and it seeps into my bones, soothing and healing the aching joint, where icebergs carved cracks down the patella, and still crunch their way downstream, groaning and creaking, but the flaming sun trickles into glaciers, into muscle and sinew, and slowly it transforms, pain ebbing by the day as it melts, ice turning to loch, for the solstice is a time of renewal, and I am glad for it, and walk happily in the sun.