Bees Were Better

"In college, people were always breaking up." So begins Naomi Shihab Nye's poem "Bees Were Better" (2008). To read that poem in its entirety, click here.

Look

In "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten" (1986), the essay of his that became a classic, Robert Fulghum wrote in part, "And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned -- the biggest word of all -- LOOK." In his poem "The Starlight Night" (reprinted below) Gerard Manley Hopkins used the word look seven times.

THE STARLIGHT NIGHT

by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!

    O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!

    The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!

Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves'-eyes!

The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies!

    Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare!

    Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare! --

Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.

Buy then! bid then! -- What? -- Prayer, patience, alms, vows.

Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs!

    Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellow sallows!

These are indeed the barn; withindoors house

The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse

    Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows.

The First Dandelion

THE FIRST DANDELION

from Leaves of Grass (1892) by Walt Whitman

Simple and fresh and fair from winter's close emerging,

As if no artifice of fashion, business, politics, had ever been,

Forth from its sunny nook of shelter'd grass -- innocent, golden, calm as the dawn,

The spring's first dandelion shows its trustful face.

Image by Markus Koch from Pixabay

A Haiku for Leap Day

A lonely pond in age-old stillness sleeps . . .

    Apart, unstirred by sound or motion . . . till

Suddenly into it a lithe frog leaps.

    --Basho (1644-1694)

      (Translated, from the Japanese, by Curtis Hidden Page, 1923)

Portrait of Basho by Hokusai, late 18th century

A Chip on His Shoulder

A CHIP ON HIS SHOULDER

Author Unknown

He always has something to grumble about,

    Has the man with a chip on his shoulder;

The world to the dogs is going, no doubt,

    To the man with a chip on his shoulder;

The clouds are too dark, the sun is too bright.

No matter what happens, it is never right;

When peace is prevailing he is spoiling to fight,

    The man with a chip on his shoulder.

A portrait of R. (which could stand for rogue),

a man with a chip on his shoulder

(and "The Devil's Idiot")

Photo copyright 2005 Evelyn M. Gilmer

February All Dripping Wet

If the clouds be full of rain,

they empty themselves upon the earth.

--from Ecclesiastes 11:3

(King James Version)

The title of this post is a line from an untitled poem in Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book by English poet Christina Rossetti.