…the bumblebee: Emily Dickinson

This poem may be RT’s favorite by an American poet; it certainly is the only poem he carries around in his wallet. Rarely does a poem possess the kind of precision and punch that Dickinson delivers here. She breaks right though the skin of things to reveal the whole world in tension between motion and rest, knowledge and mystery. Stillness is not death, but an infinite reflection of life…RT

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XIV

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SOME things that fly there be,—             

Birds, hours, the bumble-bee:  

Of these no elegy.

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Some things that stay there be,—          

Grief, hills, eternity:              

Nor this behooveth me.

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There are, that resting, rise.      

Can I expound the skies?           

How still the riddle lies!

–Emily Dickinson (1862)

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Photo: Female Worker, Bombus Pratorum; author, Bernie Kohl; WikiCmns; Public Domain.

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