Exquisite Solstice 2025

a collective poem for the Winter Solstice by 78 poets. Arranged by joseph reiver, scored & mastered by eric Hoegemeyer.

There are some sacred spaces,
where you can hear the sound of creation;
the sound of the sun as it moves through the heavens
Or, on the longest night, furthermost from the sun,
Hear the dead’s tender hiss as it sprouts from the stillness,
toward these perfect, tangled places.

Into the Solstice passageway - a deep, frosted night. Treading lightly I find refuge in the rarest garden: exquisite and still. The sight unfurrows my brow, bedazzles my eyes, catches my heartbeat as I slowly recede from sight.

Tracks in snow
Frost on window
Transcends beauty

You draw me in with every visit to NYC.
My favorite place; I awaken each time.
Quiet statues, busy birds; benches warmed by thick-coated strangers, absorbing your beauty.

Winter tucks childhood in his pocket.
Elizabeth keeps her secrets soft,
even when the city doesn’t.

Sky converses with people through
Frozen silent languages Transformed
Into shimmering pavement reflection

snow falls
and the garden floods
with children

Less people on the streets, less time in the light
Save up your exhalations for the garden
We take our longest breaths on the shortest day

Beloved bird where did you go?
Where are you hiding in the city called home?
Fly me to the gardens you roam.

A sacred place to gather near, under the stars, and in the clear
the deeper nights bring a new, the garden hopes in winter too

Short day, long night
My mother's birthday
Starlight

Solstice shimmer sunrays of Saturn, Cloaked within a concubine of collective comeuppance, Let all see why Elizabeth Street Gardens is Paradise lost.

Let us burn the Yule log, the embers giving birth to hopeful peace,
to celebrate resurrection of God Ra, the Dies Natalis Solis Invicti,
the melting warmth to frozen thoughts and chirpings to birds and trees.

scraps of sound have survived centuries, leapt, bounced from throats and lips gone cold
Briefly coalesced into the glittering formations from which we salvage
Chime afresh, we carve our world with singing chisels

A celebration in the Garden
Lighting the Solstice darkness
Each soul a bright candle

The sun sets early lighting the sky with fire count each blessing gazing at the solstice sky remember how you connect with all humanity

In the city’s favorite pocket
a hundred thousand gather
to listen like found children.

There are all sorts of folks in the garden: people who know they’re poets, friends /
who never committed to coming, even guys who wear shorts in the winter. They all /
sit in polite silence as strangers take turns figuring out what’s going on outside the gates.

Shadows standing on an unstable peace,
While silhouettes howl life into a dead moon.
The endearing darkness promises warmth soon.

A walk through the garden with you, under the canopy by the resting lions and the boy with a thorn, I see; a lily blooms on a winter afternoon

contorting her lower stalk from her stem to mid nodule, tearing her delicate
Pistils shaking orange
Pollen from her anther

The scars left by daggered words exchanged in the company of lions.
Wounds now dressed in a still, gauze blanket of snow.
The spring sunshine will soon wash away the bandages to reveal a lioness healed; stronger than before.

Lion’s roar or wind’s whisper. Aslan visits — Winter’s immortal you know— the best shapeshifter of all, mapping cocoons for winged ones, little Lizabeth Garden monarchs, invisible now. But soon!

A small green space, potential energy at the
beating heart of this city

a small still space on this planet,
turning at year's change
on our long journey circling the sun

to grow again next year
to grow again next year

A sunlit lion's mane. Voice echoes / dapple leaves. Now, snow / -collared. Now, bells.

I hear the birds sing
Today. More light, more light, more light.
This day until June 20.

If any winds rise to carry away your comforts,
place your hands upon the earth
and bury your spirit in the soil
It will grow

you grow unknown, unknowing
when did this cell become a song?

Peeking at seedlings small,
Listen to the Snow Bells chime,
Breathing the fragrance all.

Such tiny roots will break concrete so something green can join the sun. Don't fear; they'll break the boxed up light and blinking marks we hide in, too.

Blossoms like snow beneath our soles
He said walk with me to the garden
You can take any path you want

Whimsy and daffodils
Butterflies and random thrills
A peaceful place where serenity drowns
In nature’s essence and
sweet mourning dove sounds
Elizabeth Street Garden you are a respite amid NYC madness

Walked in to become Different and so I looked around. Sculptures, songbirds, soft grass, sketchbooks with dreamers in their laps

It's not wise to cling to love songs in the garden.
Our cricket doesn’t speak English.
He only knows how to play violin with his legs.

I walk with you the dappled paths
of our favorite Garden.
We lock eyes as bright as the sun,
the feelings are ever so ardent.
Here, in the mighty heart of NY, my own heart
next to yours, remains unhardened.

In the secret haven of the soft green,
I let my heart speak to the whispering leaves. Beneath the shelter of quiet branches, I found courage blooming within me and my spirit found its song once more.

In this sanctuary of leaves and light | I lay down the weight of the city | And rise whole again.

springtime buds, summer heat, the golden light of fall
a quiet path, a neighbor near, a sanctuary for all
we haven’t seen the last of gatherings within these walls

We all love to share the beautiful New York City art, architecture and friendliness that Elizabeth Street Garden offers to all of us!’

The earth between the toes between the earth between the steel and the ivory between a crowd and the community

cities still mean something
need us
are for us

The stellar gray urban decay
This is all to say that I'm alive today

Elizabeth Street Garden is an oasis
A pair of lungs for our city

This sanctuary grows on busy souls like vines, blooming into a feeling that can only be described as coming home to yourself.

There's a new rose,
in the Garden,
and she wears a crown………….

You who arrive here with thorn in foot/
Sit naked under the obsidian moon. In the cold,
The moon’s sliver of light cracks open the shadows/
and thorns release into stillness filled
with holy/
howls of laughter that hold our fear at bay.
No one may enter these garden walls, no one/
but all.

Stone sentinels stand
in a lush, green-and-brown nook
removed from the world.

They’ll compare us to battered monuments by the time we are one again: /
Not unlike the inhabitants of this garden, its coiling boys /
Their bells and their chimeras on one more permanent retirement

If you're a Leo, like I am, missing a lion, like I do
Come east with me on Prince and south on 'Lizbeth
He's quietly waiting there for a caress on the derrière.

A bench, a lunch date, a glance
Love, you see, needs light
And water. And a little garden that could.

Lions and flowers and humans, oh my.
Elizabeth Street Garden, you are beautiful without needing to try.
May this collective poem help the world to see the treasure we have found in thee.

May we revel in this garden, a refuge for those bereaved through time or circumstance who, gazing upon the beautiful arc of her branches become able to speak again, saying “I am not alone!”

May the gentle lion stay / May the hunter spare his prey / May our hopes grow wings and fly / Shielded by the endless sky

The garden is a fertile ground of cultivated community.
With poetry readings, music, yoga, tai chi, and much more.
Our insulated oasis has survived another year. Let’s celebrate!

There was bark and dirt all over
my yoga mat. I stretched my city limbs
under the shade on Elizabeth Street.

Medusa in the corner stands as a symbol of survival. I spoke at the garden for the first time, sharing Papers and I’m Still Here. After nerves settled, I managed to reach the last word.

Much more than a tiny park tucked in the middle of SoHo
surrounded by strangers and statues older than grief
I feel less alone as the vines hold my secrets

let me be the ivy, a soft proprioceptive reach
splaying its phalanges in the afternoon hush
small green enjambments fade brick to brick

The green ever-growing,
Will you give it all your best?

As if the words we shared into the garden sprinkled like water onto the Earth.

Heaven in my town
So many plants bursting out
Sculptures come alive

A fig tree stands
Patient and wise
The garden breathes alive, quiet joy

You are always there.
Soaking up seasons and tears.
Keeper of our truths.

I look up under the tree
and the figs are still green
this garden bathed in gold light
is my refuge

Into the fig they go
To make their own family and die
Knowing Nature bears fruit for the future

And The Fig said “have they figured it out?”
And The Pear said “sometimes, even I get scared”,
And The Child said, “I might learn to live with this thorn”,
And The Plum said “oh hum, let me know when the fun has begun!”

Fruit was not forbidden and knowledge was not kept.
Everyone was welcome here.
A true Community this Garden did reflect

An elegance of days
lacy leaves of girls in pirouettes
sparrows comforting in a sunlit day

In your memory it is always this hour at the garden. You are always
resting on your back alone on the grass listening to a stranger
play Bach’s Cello Suite #1 in G Major as bar after bar of song beams out forever.

September twilight, movie among strangers, we trip over legs, blankets, picnic dinners, and arrive at a plot of dirt where we settle to watch lights and faces flicker across the screen at summer’s end in Elizabeth Street Garden.

Place as a measure of time
In the shade of brick decay
And whatever stillness we are still allowed

The garden holds me, deeply when I step in there, softly as I bring it to mind. The pairs of sculptures hint of Love.

Sat on a bench under a tree, Its branches shield me / from rapid thoughts, a bustling city, its last leaf falls to my lap / a sign of time’s passage; in the garden I am still.

sentinels and those guarding what is sacred/what you have opened/what you have opened

As the garden’s autumn is wrapped for winter, we measure the declination and inclination of earth's axis; clocking minutes, losing light, expanding night. We dance in homage to the obliquity of the ecliptic (proof that the poetry of science never muffles our wonder).

And so,
if the penny goes away forever,
What will happen to the wishes
In the wells of the world?
Will they chime on through
These silver bells
Echoing the memories
Of copper fallen leaves
Simply
Because we say so?

Stoic in snow
Shrouded in leaves
Illuminated by sun
Soothed by the scent
of spring.
In all seasons
the guardian lions
enthroned in simplicity
watch over our garden
entranced by the poetry of human nature.

by

Jacquelyn Gallo, Nan De, Christy Salmonson, Kathy Lower, Madelyn Johnson, LE Grimshaw, Jackson Campbell, Brianna Stamm, Ava Randa, Neil Scibelli, Jay Samek, Francie Scanlon, Mohammad Jamshed, Gem Masland, Belinda Behne, Bebe Schwartz, Holly Branco, Nelson Chandler Chick, Brandon Pachuca, Ruchira Amare, Ana De Portela, Sarah Schlepp, Susan Kirschbaum, Henry Wessles, AK Kaiser, Maris Laporter, Joseph Reiver, Eric Hoegemeyer, Jennifer Qian, Emily Foley, Marley Riley, Julie Gengo, Lainey Mackinnon, Ari Gold, Athina Basgiouraki, Kanchan Katapadi, Sekita Ekrek, Hannah Schneider, John Antrobus, Peyton Guthrie, Leemore Malka, David Aaron Greenberg, Neha Sharma, Bella Panico, Joff Wilson, Nancy Boksenbaum, Joseph Gargiulo, August Behl, Beth Saidel, Gregoris Kalai, Stefanie Rennert, Emily Cross, Kristin Winnefeld, Eric Buckmeyer, Leslie Harris, Sophia Garcia, Nitasha Kang, Kate Grant, Skylar Saccio, Leah Schkolnick, Jennifer Barton, Kristine Menelaou, Georgina McDonald, Ana Paula Tigar, Tony Canty, Jennifer Charles, Derek Dimir, Donna Odonovan, Rose DeMaris, Cynthia Darling, Connor Zaft, Marisa Sullivan, Simone Jones, Melanie Janisse-Barlow, Yvonne Brooks, Jesse Smith, Patti Smith.