Muse Day: The Bee and Lovely Mosquito

Carpenter Bee on Smooth Phlox

 The Bee

  by: Emily Dickinson  (1830-1886)      
   
 
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!

Ahh, July!  It's hot/humid and the garden is filled with critters.  Some are  not as wonderful as the bees and butterflies we all love.  I have to wear a mosquito net suit to be outside for very long.  I thought you might also like Doug McCloud's poem Lovely Mosquito. It made me smile!




Lovely mosquito, attacking my arm

As quiet and still as a statue,

Stay right where you are! I'll do you no harm-

I simply desire to pat you.
Just puncture my veins and swallow your fill

For nobody's going to swot you.

Now, lovely mosquito, stay perfectly still-

A SWIPE! and a SPLAT! and I GOT YOU!


xxoogail


Garden Bloggers' Muse Day is brought to you by Carolyn Choi, stop by her blog for links to other bloggers celebrating Muse Day.

This post was written by Gail Eichelberger for my blog Clay and Limestone Copyright 2011.This work protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Please contact me for permission to copy, reproduce, scrape, etc.

A Summer Day~Muse Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver, A Summer Day



For more Muse Day posts please visit Carolyn Gail, host of Muse Day, which is celebrated on the first day of each month.

Gail

March Muse Day

Crows
Mary Oliver

From a single grain they have multiplied.
When you look in the eyes of one
you have seen them all.

At the edges of highways
they pick up limp things.
They are anything but refined.

Or they fly out over the the corn
like pellets of black fire,
like overloads.

Crow is crow, you say.
What else is there to say?
Drive down any road,

take a train or an airplane
across the world, leave
your old life behind,

die and be born again--
wherever you arrive
they'll be there first,

glossy and rowdy
and indistinguishable.
The deep muscle of the world.

Please join host Carolyn Gail, An artist and garden designer who dishes the dirt on gardening in the Windy City at her blog Sweet Home and Garden Chicago for other Muse Day offerings.

I hope that you all had a sweet weekend.

Gail

Musing On Our First Snowfall

We've had our first snowfall and it's Muse Day! I humbly submit this poem by Elinor Wylie (1885-1928) and the accompanying photos in celebration to Nancy at Soliloquy hostess of The First Snowfall Project and to CarolynGail/Sweet Home and Garden Chicago hostess of Muse Day.

Thank you both.

Velvet Shoes

Let us walk in the white snow
In a soundless space;
With footsteps quiet and slow,
At a tranquil pace,
Under veils of white lace.

I shall go shod in silk,
And you in wool,
White as white cow’s milk,
More beautiful
Than the breast of a gull.

We shall walk through the still town
In a windless peace;
We shall step upon white down,
Upon silver fleece,
Upon softer than these.

We shall walk in velvet shoes:
Wherever we go
Silence will fall like dews
On white silence below.
We shall walk in the snow.

Gail

My friends, I hope your weekend had moments that made you laugh until you had to hold your sides, filled your heart with joy and energized your spirit.

Snowshoeing the day away in my Yowies!

Mine sure did!

In case you want more info on the unique snow shoes...go here