Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Honey / Bee

 

“Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.”— Robert Green Ingersoll

Mesolithic rock painting of a honey hunter harvesting honey and wax from a bees nest in a tree. At Cuevas de la Araña en Bicorp. (Dating around 8000 to 6000 BC)

“Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt – marvelous error! – that I had a bee hive here inside my heart. And the golden bees were making white combs and sweet honey from my old failures.”— Antonio Machado

Midweek Motif ~ Honey / Bee

Recently I read a beautiful poem, 'Where Honey Comes From' by Maggie Smith and Honey/Bee– motif for our poets came instantly.

With honey and bee humans have been having a pretty long hunter-hunted relationship. Is it the same today or has it changed? Let your words buzz.

Your words may be connected to the sweet, sticky fluid that bees make from nectar; to the bee itself; to the flower, storehouse of the nectar; to the honeycomb or even to the deadly humans for we must not forget we are facing bee-loss globally in an increasing rate; among other factors human factor is one that has contributed to this sharp decline. However honey bee is not on the endangered species list yet.

Sharing some honey / bee poems here:

Fame Is A Bee

by Emily Dickinson

Fame is a bee.

It has a song—

It has a sting—

Ah, too, it has a wing.

A Bee

by Matsuo Basho

A bee

staggers out

of the peony

Bees

by Norman Rowland Gale

You voluble,
Velvety
Vehement fellows
That play on your
Flying and
Musical cellos,
All goldenly
Girdled you
Senerade clover,
Each artist in
Bass but a
Bibulous rover!

You passionate,
Powdery
Pastoral bandits,
Who gave you your
Roaming and
Rollicking mandates?
Come out of my
Foxglove; come
Out of my roses
You bees with the
Plushy and
Plausible noses!

An extract from Kahlil Gibran’s Prophet :

                       And now you ask in your heart,
"How shall we distinguish that which is good in pleasure from

                that which is not good?"
Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is

            the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower,
But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the

                       bee.
             For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life,
     And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love,
  And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of  

                    pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.

People of Orphalese, be in your pleasures like the flowers and the        bees.

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—

(Next week Susan’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Truth / in honor of Gandhi)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Prayer

The sacred Mount Kailash in Tibet.
From Bild:Kailash Tibet.jpg; photo taken by Heringf. 

“I talk to God but the sky is empty.” 

― Sylvia Plath

“If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough.” 

― Meister Eckhart

“You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.” ― Kahill Gibran

“I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer 

until I prayed with my legs.” ― Frederick Douglass

"I believe some people-- lots of people-- pray through the witness of their lives, through the work they do, the friendships they have, the love they offer people and receive from people. Since when are words the only acceptable form of prayer?” ― Dorothy Day

"There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”― Rumi

source

Midweek Motif ~ Prayer

Thousands of poems say they are prayers, and hundreds of books exist about prayer.  Still more poems and prose are prayer-like without saying so ~ Walt Whitman's and Mary Oliver's poems, for example. 

So what can we add?  Poems about our experience-based knowledge?  Mystic moments?  Silence? Rejection? Love?  

What haven't you said?  

What bears repeating?

Your Challenge:  Write a new poem in which the narrator observes prayer or reveals some truth about prayer.

Praying Hands by Albrecht Dürer

I happened to be Standing
by Mary Oliver

"I don't know where prayers go,
     or what they do.
Do cats pray, while they sleep
     half-asleep in the sun?
Does the opossum pray as it
     crosses the street?
The sunflowers? The old black oak
     growing older every year?" 

far memory

BY LUCILLE CLIFTON

a poem in seven parts

1

convent

my knees recall the pockets

worn into the stone floor,

my hands, tracing against

the wall their original name, remember

the cold brush of brick, and the smell

of the brick powdery and wet

and the light finding its way in

through the high bars.

and also the sisters singing

at matins, their sweet music

the voice of the universe at peace

and the candles their light the light

at the beginning of creation

and the wonderful simplicity of prayer

smooth along the wooden beads

and certainly attended.

2

someone inside me remembers

that my knees must be hidden away

that my hair must be shorn

so that vanity will not test me

that my fingers are places of prayer

and are holy that my body is promised

to something more certain

than myself

. . . .

(Read the rest HERE.)

The Ballad of Reading Gaol

BY OSCAR WILDE

I 

He did not wear his scarlet coat, 

For blood and wine are red, 

And blood and wine were on his hands 

When they found him with the dead, 

The poor dead woman whom he loved, 

And murdered in her bed. 

He walked amongst the Trial Men 

In a suit of shabby gray; 

A cricket cap was on his head, 

And his step seemed light and gay; 

But I never saw a man who looked 

So wistfully at the day. 

I never saw a man who looked 

With such a wistful eye 

Upon that little tent of blue 

Which prisoners call the sky, 

And at every drifting cloud that went 

With sails of silver by. 

I walked, with other souls in pain, 

Within another ring, 

And was wondering if the man had done 

A great or little thing, 

When a voice behind me whispered low, 

"That fellow's got to swing." 

Dear Christ! the very prison walls 

Suddenly seemed to reel, 

And the sky above my head became 

Like a casque of scorching steel; 

And, though I was a soul in pain, 

My pain I could not feel. 

I only knew what hunted thought 

Quickened his step, and why 

He looked upon the garish day 

With such a wistful eye; 

The man had killed the thing he loved, 

And so he had to die. 

Yet each man kills the thing he loves, 

By each let this be heard, 

Some do it with a bitter look, 

Some with a flattering word, 

The coward does it with a kiss, 

The brave man with a sword! 

Some kill their love when they are young, 

And some when they are old; 

Some strangle with the hands of Lust, 

Some with the hands of Gold: 

The kindest use a knife, because 

The dead so soon grow cold. 

Some love too little, some too long, 

Some sell, and others buy; 

Some do the deed with many tears, 

And some without a sigh: 

For each man kills the thing he loves, 

Yet each man does not die. 

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE.)

Norman Rockwell, Golden Rule, 1961.
Source
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Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community.   (Next week Sumana’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Morning Poem.)

The Living Dead

~ Honouring our poetic ancestors ~

On Love

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, "I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

– Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931) 
from The Prophet

With Valentine's Day coming up, what better time to look at love?

But this is not a love poem as such, which one might bestow as a romantic gift to one's beloved on February 14th. Rather it is a statement of what love is really like at deep levels (according to Gibran, anyway). It looks at the spiritual aspect. In fact, Gibran comes from a tradition in which the Beloved is understood to be God – which makes better sense of these lines.

Yet these words also apply to all kinds of love – that of a parent for a child, for instance – and certainly to romantic love too, when it is real love. And the message is surely that love is worth it all.

This is a well-known piece, and I don't think there is more I need say about it.  But it does deserve to be pondered. It actually demands a decision of everyone who reads or hears it – will you choose love no matter the cost? Or would you rather stay comfortable?

We're poets. I'm guessing we'd choose love!

(For more details about Kahlil Gibran, see my post of two years ago when I also featured him.)

Material shared in 'The Living Dead' is presented for study and review. Poems, photos and other writings and images remain the property of the copyright owners, where applicable (older poems may be out of copyright)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Equinox, Equator

Seasons are opposite on either side of the Equator, 
so the equinox in September is also known as the
Autumnal (fall) equinox in the northern hemisphere. 
In the Southern Hemisphere, it's known as the Spring (vernal) equinox. 
*  *  * 

September ~ New Year

by Susan Chast

Best cool of night and warmth of day
Be spring or fall your hemisphere
To sleep and wake to self in play
Best cool of night and warmth of day
To know the God to whom we pray
In Nature’s arms and atmosphere
Best cool of night and warmth of day
Be spring or fall your hemisphere.

* * *

"With the possible exception of the equator, everything begins somewhere."

― C. S. Lewis

“The summer ended. Day by day, and taking its time, the summer ended. The noises in the street began to change, diminish, voices became fewer, the music sparse. Daily, blocks and blocks of children were spirited away. Grownups retreated from the streets, into the houses. Adolescents moved from the sidewalk to the stoop to the hallway to the stairs . . .” 
― James Baldwin

“She turned to the sunlight
    And shook her yellow head,
And whispered to her neighbor:
    "Winter is dead.” 
― A.A. Milne

* * * 

Midweek Motif ~ Equinox, Equator

Here we are again when Fall and Spring begin on opposite sides of the Equator.  

These are my favorite seasons as North and South spin away from each other.  And for only a minute, Light and Dark stand evenly and gaze at each other with neither envy nor fear.  

Your challenge: In a new poem, show us the Equinox or the Equator as you experience it. 

There will be Stars by Sara Teasdale

There will be stars over the place forever; After the house and the street we loved are lost, Every time the earth circles her orbit On the night the autumn equinox is crossed Two stars we knew, poised on the peak of midnight Will reach their zenith; stillness will be deep -- There will be stars over the place forever, There will be stars forever, while we sleep.

Said a Blade of Grass

Related Poem Content Details

BY KAHLIL GIBRAN

Said a blade of grass to an autumn leaf, “You make such a noise falling!  You scatter all my winter dreams.”

Said the leaf indignant, “Low-born and low-dwelling!  Songless, peevish thing!  You live not in the upper air and you cannot tell the sound of singing.”

Then the autumn leaf lay down upon the earth and slept.  And when spring came she waked again—and she was a blade of grass.
 
And when it was autumn and her winter sleep was upon her, and above her through all the air the leaves were falling, she muttered to herself, “O these autumn leaves!  They make such noise!  They scatter all my winter dreams.”

The Gardener 85

Related Poem Content Details

BY RABINDRANATH TAGORE

Who are you, reader, reading my poems an hundred years hence? 

I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds. 

Open your doors and look abroad. 

From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories of the vanished flowers of an hundred years before. 

In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across an hundred years.

* * * 

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community

 Next week Sumana's Midweek Motif will be ~ 

Two Souls: Caged and Free