Taken literally, each word of the short poem that is Long Train is a sturdy, useful brick; and so I might say, if there is something you hope to build, it always pays to begin with good materials. Such materials are most readily found in nature, but there are times and places where the harsh, rough emblems of the city are just as useful, and even beautiful. I have employed many of these myself, though rarely if ever in poetry. My poems are never gritty; they alternate between light and shadow; their edges, where discernible, are smooth; visually and textually, they have balance, grace, and form; and so the bricks somehow become something like a river or a tree, the inside of an orange or a pomegranate.
Back when we were living on the farm, we had a friend and neighbor who was a third-generation beekeeper; across the yard from his house, in the shade of an oak, behind his well, he had his honey shed, and it was as much a cathedral to him as the wild high Sierras were to John Muir. The scent inside was powerful, and breathing it, I felt as if I had entered the beekeeper’s dream. His relationship with bees was one of gratitude; he pitied them their occasional stings, because he knew he had intruded upon their world.
The thoughts you thought you hid, but can’t. They do tell, don’t they?
~
[ 1961 ]
Categories: Annotations and Elucidations
Tags: Bees, Bob Callison, Bricks, Gratitude, Honey, John Muir, Oranges, Poems, Poetry, Pomegranates, Rivers, Thoughts, Trains, Trees, Words
William Michaelian 