sending the bees

This poppy is not the flower that gets a shout in the poem, but staring at this one on a walk the other day was nearly hypnotizing!

Today wasn’t the equinox but 
it had all the hallmarks: it started,
it ended, and I, for a moment, hoped,
despaired, and resolved somewhere
in between. Then I, astride the lavender bush, 
ran my hand up one stem like a banister 
or your knee, sending the bees, 
and, without saying a thing,
this purpling world —
blushing unconditionally.

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Hi! I haven’t been able to give this the weekly treatment this last month or so, but I’m back with a poem about seasons, relationship, fragrance… and will return to my usual cadence!

I recently read quiet orient riot by Nathalie Khankan (as a part of a curated year of Palestinian poetry from an all-poetry Seattle bookstore!) It’s a stirring collection and one stylistic signature that I found affecting was that each poem had the title in all caps in the middle of the poem rather than at the beginning. I may try bolding for a bit - I liked the way it maintained the flow of the poem and also felt more like a song with a hinge moment or a chorus.

This season in the PNW has felt like an eternal Spring. I adore the fleets of bees that crowd the lavender bushes (even now, before fully blooming!) in our neighborhood and so often will go for neighborhood walks and brush along them to release that unbelievable fragrance. It joins a few other “walk around the neighborhood poems” I’ve written. It’s fun to see the changes in style/voice since the earlier poems and the continued inspirations.

• Halloween Decorations Through Presidents’ Day

• In the Neighborhood

I’m still working through Adam Moss’s The Work of Art and I enjoyed his conversation with the poet Marie Howe who was surprised to realize that ideas for her poem The Singularity had begun showing up in other sketches and fragments in the months leading up to the writing. The things that burrow into the subconscious… emerging again and again …

With Gratitude,