“Oh, for a bee’s experience”

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Like trains of cars on tracks of plush
I hear the level bee:
A jar across the flowers goes,
Their velvet masonry

Withstands until the sweet assault
Their chivalry consumes,
While he, victorious, tilts away
To vanquish other blooms.

His feet are shod with gauze,
His helmet is of gold;
His breast, a single onyx
With chrysoprase, inlaid.

His labor is a chant,
His idleness a tune;
Oh, for a bee’s experience
Of clovers and of noon!

~Emily Dickinson

The bee is a train. The bee is a knight! Despite Dickinson’s lamentable misunderstanding of the basic fact that these valiant bees-errant are all lady knights, this poem is completely charming. And it makes me wonder–what is the world like to a bee? What does she see, smell, experience? What would it bee like to be bound to hive and home yet free to ride the warm currents of summer air? To dance the map to sweetness?

But why “chrysoprase”? It’s a lovely word–but it means apple-green chalcedony. I have never seen any part of a bee I’d consider apple-green. Gold, gauze, onyx–yes, but “apple-green”? What kind of bees did they have in Amherst, Massachusetts back then??

Weird color description aside, this is one of those poems that brings Emily Dickinson vividly to life for me. She was watching those bees as closely as I do, tracing their flights through the air, noting where they landed and dallied. She wondered, as I do, about the mysteries of their comings and goings, the magic of their labor. She understood that in the smallest things, great wonders wait.

BEES!!!

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The bee is not afraid of me,
I know the butterfly;
The pretty people in the woods
Receive me cordially.

The brooks laugh louder when I come, The breezes madder play.
Wherefore, mine eyes, thy silver mists? Wherefore, O summer’s day?

~Emily Dickinson

Aside from the lovely magic of “the pretty people in the woods” (faeries? elves?? certainly something magical!), I love this poem because it is one of Emily’s many, many bee-related ones. She must have adored bees. She writes about them often.

For several years, I kept honeybees–until they all died off one recent awful winter. I have been beeless for a couple of years now, and the orchard looks desolate without their hives, the clovers abandoned without their small ceaseless thrumming.

But!

Bees are coming!

I am getting bees again!

So if you are not a bee fan, you might want to avoid this space for a while, because Emily and I are all about the bees.

The pedigree of honey and the history of beekeeping

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The pedigree of honey
Does not concern the bee;
A clover, any time, to him
Is aristocracy.

~Emily Dickinson

We should all be more like bees. That is my takeaway from this poem.

As a beekeeper, though, I’ve just emerged from an internet rabbit hole where I’ve been attempting to figure out whether Emily Dickinson should have known that worker bees are female. Apparently, while some beekeeping scientists did discover this fact as early as the early 1800s, it was not widely accepted for about a hundred years. So I guess I can forgive Emily her ignorance on this particular topic. I wonder if knowing this bit of information would have changed any of her poetry–or her imagining–in any way. She wrote so many poems about or including bees–I wonder what might have shifted if she had known that the bees she was describing were almost entirely female.

Perspective

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IT makes no difference abroad,
The seasons fit the same,
The mornings blossom into noons,
And split their pods of flame.


Wild-flowers kindle in the woods,
The brooks brag all the day;
No blackbird bates his jargoning
For passing Calvary.


Auto-da-fé and judgment
Are nothing to the bee;
His separation from his rose
To him seems misery.

~Emily Dickinson

I had to look up “auto-da-fé,” and wow. Basically, it’s an allusion to the Inquisition. You can read a definition here.

That one word crystallizes the meaning of the poem. Dickinson is comparing the eternal cycles of nature to the most extreme that humanity has to offer–Calvary, the Inquisition–and concluding that really, none of that human stuff matters to nature. Our doings, which seem so momentous to us, are nothing to nature. Our beliefs, religions, dogmas, don’t matter beyond ourselves.

On one hand, it’s a terrifying thought–everything we get so riled up about doesn’t really matter in the end, or at least doesn’t matter beyond ourselves. On the other hand, it’s comforting–perhaps a little bit of much-needed perspective. The world will go on without us.

Freedom

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FROM all the jails the boys and girls
Ecstatically leap,—
Beloved, only afternoon
That prison does n’t keep.


They storm the earth and stun the air,
A mob of solid bliss.
Alas! that frowns could lie in wait
For such a foe as this!

~Emily Dickinson

In my copy of Dickinson’s poems, this one is titled “Saturday Afternoon,” and I was meant to be writing it on Saturday afternoon, but, while the girls and boys have already ecstatically leapt from their jails, the teachers of said escaped inmates are still imprisoned by checklists and room cleanup and faculty meetings and report cards. So I give you this poem on a Sunday afternoon instead, as I prepare to go back to what my granddad liked to call “the knowledge mill” to finish up my remaining time so that I, too, may be free.

Purple clover

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THERE is a flower that bees prefer,
And butterflies desire;
To gain the purple democrat
The humming-birds aspire.


And whatsoever insect pass,
A honey bears away
Proportioned to his several dearth
And her capacity.


Her face is rounder than the moon,
And ruddier than the gown
Of orchis in the pasture,
Or rhododendron worn.


She doth not wait for June;
Before the world is green
Her sturdy little countenance
Against the wind is seen,


Contending with the grass,
Near kinsman to herself,
For privilege of sod and sun,
Sweet litigants for life.


And when the hills are full,
And newer fashions blow,
Doth not retract a single spice
For pang of jealousy.


Her public is the noon,
Her providence the sun,
Her progress by the bee proclaimed
In sovereign, swerveless tune.


The bravest of the host,
Surrendering the last,
Nor even of defeat aware
When cancelled by the frost.

~Emily Dickinson

Emily has a lot to say about purple clover. It’s a humble sort of flower, yet completely wonderful, too–often written off as a weed, but transmogrified into the sweetest honey.

White clover comes early here. Its blossoms carpet the lawn, providing some of the first nectar for pollinating insects. It’s small and low-growing, profuse, starring the green with tiny fireworks of pink-tinged white. The purple clover comes later. I just spotted some in the garden last week, and left it where it was. As gardeners go, I am probably a bit more whimsical than is strictly wise. There’s a wild poppy that reseeds itself year after year among the tomatoes and lettuce. I let it, and enjoy its random burst of color among the green.

The purple clover will stay in the garden at the edge of the bean patch. I will watch it for honeybees, maybe cut and dry some for herbal tea. It is a reminder that life is uncontrollable, persistent, and strangely sweet.

Ravelled out of reach

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I felt a cleaving in my mind
As if my brain had split;
I tried to match it, seam by seam,
But could not make them fit.


The thought behind I strove to join
Unto the thought before,
But sequence ravelled out of reach
Like balls upon a floor.

~Emily Dickinson

Yup. Pretty much this. It’s the end of the school year, which means that of course nothing is going smoothly and everything is fraught with complication, so I’m just going to leave it at this and call it good.

The parlor of the day

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The day came slow, till five o’clock,
Then sprang before the hills
Like hindered rubies, or the light
A sudden musket spills.


The purple could not keep the east,
The sunrise shook from fold,
Like breadths of topaz, packed a night,
The lady just unrolled.


The happy winds their timbrels took;
The birds, in docile rows,
Arranged themselves around their prince
(The wind is prince of those).


The orchard sparkled like a Jew,—
How mighty ’t was, to stay
A guest in this stupendous place,
The parlor of the day!

~Emily Dickinson

First impressions: Oooh, colors! Imagery! This is good. Oh, wait, casual anti-Semitism. Ick.

Second-read impressions: I love all the color imagery. Sometimes Dickinson seems to be painting with words in an impressionistic sort of way, splashing them across the page for their affect as much as their precise meaning. “The sunrise shook from fold”–how do we read this? It seems meant to be felt as much as understood. Is it a sheep fold? or a fold of cloth? Regardless, we feel the essence of what she is getting at–something once contained, now freed.

And then there’s “The lady.” Rhythmically, this could just as easily be “A lady,” but Dickinson is specific. Which lady? Are we supposed to know this? Intuit it? Either way, the kernel of sense is clear.

And how do the birds arrange themselves “in docile rows” around the wind? Long experience observing chickens has taught me that birds + wind does not in any way equal anything remotely like “docile.” Again, it’s the feeling rather than the meaning that matters here.

We are always guests in the morning. We cannot remain in it, much as we might like to. It moves on–or we move on. One way or the other, our sojourn there cannot last.

The sun’s leaving

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The sun just touched the morning;
The morning, happy thing,
Supposed that he had come to dwell,
And life would be all spring.


She felt herself supremer,—
A raised, ethereal thing;
Henceforth for her what holiday!
Meanwhile, her wheeling king


Trailed slow along the orchards
His haughty, spangled hems,
Leaving a new necessity,—
The want of diadems!


The morning fluttered, staggered,
Felt feebly for her crown,—
Her unanointed forehead
Henceforth her only one.

~Emily Dickinson

Getting caught up on a zillion neglected things this Memorial Day weekend, so today’s post is just a poem and the sun setting over the Alleghenies. Here’s to sun-filled days and starry nights!

The brain

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The brain is wider than the sky,
For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include
With ease, and you beside.


The brain is deeper than the sea,
For, hold them, blue to blue,
The one the other will absorb,
As sponges, buckets do.


The brain is just the weight of God,
For, lift them, pound for pound,
And they will differ, if they do,
As syllable from sound.

~Emily Dickinson

I love this one. So much. “The brain is just the weight of God.” I don’t think I have anything to add to this, so I’ll just leave it here for your enjoyment.