The pedigree of Honey, Does not concern the Bee.

I love Emily Dickinson and am proud to share with her a love of nature and an excessive fondness for bees! Yesterday, while walking in the woods, I came across so many burly dozing ones, honey-heavy, bees fluttering from flower to flower, truly justifying the metaphor busy as a bee. I love the sight of a bee, how cleverly it suspends itself mid-air, its gossamer-thin wings supporting the weight of its body, greedily sipping nectar from a flower and yet never ever trampling the petals or crushing the aroma.... Emerson calls the bee a "zig-zag steerer, desert cheerer". Truly, he's a sailor of the atmosphere, sailing through the air and a yellow-breeched philosopher.... 

His labour is a Chant —

His Idleness — A Tune 

Oh, for a Bee's Experience 

Of Clovers, and of Noon! 

The Bee is not afraid of me.

I know the Butterfly. 

The pretty people in the Woods 

receive me cordially! 

And then there is that wonderful haiku by the master himself - Matsuo Basho: 


A bee
staggers out 
of the peony.

Blue skies smiling at me / Nothing but blue skies do I see....

A slash of Blue —
A sweep of Gray —
Some scarlet patches on the way
Compose an evening sky
A little purple — slipped between —
Some ruby trousers hurried on —
A wave of gold —
A bank of day —
This just makes out the morning sky.

Emily Dickinson

A sound as of a passing bell....

Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn
Indicative that suns go down;
The notice to the startled grass
That darkness is about to pass.

~ Emily Dickinson ~

I am like a flag in the center of open space
I sense ahead the wind which is coming, and must live it through
while the things of the world still do not move:
the doors still close softly, and the chimneys are full
of silence,
the windows do not rattle yet, and the dust still lies down.

I already know the storm, and I am troubled as the sea.
I leap out, and fall back,
and throw myself out, and am absolutely alone
in the great storm.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

Bring me the sunset in a cup

An ignorance a Sunset
Confer upon the Eye—
Of Territory—Color—
Circumference—Decay—

Its Amber Revelation
Exhilirate—Debase—
Omnipotence' inspection
Of Our inferior face—

And when the solemn features
Confirm—in Victory—
We start—as if detected
In Immortality—

~ Emily Dickinson ~

A fashionless delight.... A dateless melody....

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

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,—

One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do
If bees are few.

Could I but ride indefinite,
As doth the meadow-bee,
And visit only where I liked,
And no man visit me.

And flirt all day with buttercups,
And marry whom I may,
And dwell a little everywhere,
Or better, run away

With no police to follow,
Or chase me if I do,
Till I should jump peninsulas
To get away from you -

I said, but just to be a bee,
Upon a raft of air,
And row in nowhere all day long,
And anchor off the bar,—
What liberty! So captives deem
Who tight in dungeons are.

A Saturday Ramble.

The blunder is estimate -
“Eternity is Then,”
We say, as of a station.
Meanwhile he is so near,
He joins me in my ramble,
Divides abode with me,
No friend have I that so persists
As this Eternity....

Wisteria Redux

I just cannot get enough of wisteria! And no, this is not wisteria season. I'm just nostalgic for them. For their droopy chandelier look, their wistful, not-quite-lavender scent, their shades of mauve, lilac, lavender & purple.....

The Chinese wisteria, now so familiar, was not the first of its kind to be discovered. My vade mecum & other notables inform me that the honour goes to the variety called wisteria frutescens which was grown in England in 1724, then known by the rather prosaic name of "Carolina Kidney Beans"; in other words, like the Holy Roman Empire, neither holy, nor Roman, nor quite an empire!
Wisteria was so named in 1818 by the Anglo-American botanist Thomas Nuttall after the German-American physician-anatomist, Dr. Caspar Wistar of Philadelphia.
This plant flowers twice a year. Shimla is given a pretty opulent display in spring on branches which are otherwise almost bare. The summer version is scantier and often the victim of fierce hailstorms. These lovely flowers are accompanied by bunches of coppery-gold young leaves. A marvellous contrast of warm & cool palette.

Emily Dickinson and a country road

Undue significance a starving man attaches
To food
Far off; he sighs, and therefore hopeless
And therefore good.

Partaken, it relieves indeed, but proves us
That spices fly
In the receipt. It was the distance
Was savoury.

Sunsets in Shimla

Remind me of some lines by Emily Dickinson:
"Nature rarer uses yellow
Than another hue;
Saves she all of that for sunsets,—
Prodigal of blue,

Spending scarlet like a woman,
Yellow she affords
Only scantly and selectly,
Like a lover’s words."