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| Bob the Pirate Boards the Ship |
I don’t think these purple flowers are morning glories, but
they’re a rich purple, and after an hour of searching for their name, enough’s
enough.
I’m telling myself it’s more interesting that they seem to be a chorus, or at least a barbershop quartet,
groups of three or four heads leaning in one direction, mouths open, as if they’re shouting
at or calling to the bees.
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| Singing? Calling? Yelling? |
Are the bees an enemy (pirates?) attacking or are they a food or friend or mate the
flowers have been begging for?
Here’s a John Ciardi poem that captures the bee, if
not the flower.
The opening image might be one of those verbal wonders that
re-define our notion of a thing for the rest of time. How can we un-see bees as
hunchbacks in pirate pants, with peg-leg hooks?
On the other hand, I wonder if there’s enough in the poem.
After the charm of the opening and the extended simile of pirates boarding a
ship, what new insights are we given? There is the theme of fleeting beauty, of
transience, but I wonder how much the poem changes our lives or our understanding. Is that asking too much of a poem? Yet some poems do that.
About the photos: bees zip about so fast that their visit seems one slurp
and they buzz off, no loyalty to any single activity or song—like pirates
indeed, rapacious. Surely that excuses the blur in my photos—when in doubt, blame the
subject.
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| Bee Butt |
Lines by John Ciardi : The Poetry Foundation
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