Category: images

Monument

Pam and BrennaLeave a comment

She laid her docile crescent down,
And this mechanic stone
Still states, to dates that have forgot,
The news that she is gone.

So constant to its stolid trust,
The shaft that never knew,
It shames the constancy that fled
Before its emblem flew.

~Emily Dickinson

During my family’s vacation, we visited the Wright Brothers Memorial in North Carolina. It’s a well-designed monument–it sweeps upward from the crest of a hill, evoking the idea of flight–but I’m still struck by our human need to memorialize that which is fleeting in nearly immortal stone. There is a strange contrast between the seeming weightlessness of flight and the tons of rock we use to commemorate it, the weightlessness of the human soul and the stones we erect when it has fled. Heaviness in an attempt to pin down something that won’t be pinned down, that will not stay. Permanence to mark the passing of something that could never last forever. We find ways to ensure the remembrance of our own mortality.

The monument I visited is a different thing from the tombstone Dickinson evokes, but they have this in common–their underscoring of the ways in which we humans try to immortalize the mortal, to make permanent that which cannot last.

More bees!

Pam and BrennaLeave a comment

Come slowly – Eden!
Lips unused to Thee –
Bashful – sip thy Jessamines –
As the fainting Bee –

Reaching late his flower,
Round her chamber hums –
Counts his nectars –
Enters – and is lost in Balms.

~Emily Dickinson

I couldn’t find anything that seemed appropriate for Father’s Day, so here is a picture of a bee and yet another Dickinson poem that mentions bees. Because you can never have too many bees.

An Emily Dickinson Herbarium

Pam and BrennaLeave a comment

“Whose are the little beds,” I asked,
“Which in the valleys lie?”
Some shook their heads, and others smiled,
And no one made reply.


“Perhaps they did not hear,” I said;
“I will inquire again.
Whose are the beds, the tiny beds
So thick upon the plain?”


“‘T is daisy in the shortest;
A little farther on,
Nearest the door to wake the first,
Little leontodon.


“‘T is iris, sir, and aster,
Anemone and bell,
Batschia in the blanket red,
And chubby daffodil.”


Meanwhile at many cradles
Her busy foot she plied,
Humming the quaintest lullaby
That ever rocked a child.


“Hush! Epigea wakens! —
The crocus stirs her lids,
Rhodora’s cheek is crimson, —
She’s dreaming of the woods.”


Then, turning from them, reverent,
“Their bed-time ‘t is,” she said;
“The bumble-bees will wake them
When April woods are red.”

~Emily Dickinson
My trees are waking up to spring.
A few days ago, they were absolutely riddled with soft, white blossoms. Now they’re giving way to leaves green as a luna moth.
Welcome, daffodils. Or, more correctly: goodbye, daffodils. They’ve been in bloom for over a week, and they’re already starting to die.
Welcome, irises. I dug these from a huge clump in my front yard at the end of last summer and planted them without much hope in the backyard.
I planted this native azalea last spring. It never flowered, but now it has rosy pink buds forming.
I planted these flowers in October, watered them maybe twice, and then left them to their own devices. Thanks for sticking around, violas.
And, finally, my absolute favorite sign of spring: my husband ran over this St. John’s wort last summer, thinking it was a weed. (It was not.) Cue much crying from me and a well-chastised husband. Now the plant is putting out new leaves. Thanks for sticking around. Thank you for trying to live.