Evening

Clifford Webb

Evening

From upland slopes I see the cows file by,

Lowing, great-chested, down the homeward trail,

By dusking fields and meadows shining pale

With moon-tipped dandelions. Flickering high,

A peevish night-hawk in the western sky

Beats up into the lucent solitudes,

Or drops with gliding wing. The stilly woods

Grow dark and deep, and gloom mysteriously.

Cool night winds creep, and whisper in mine ear.

The homely cricket gossips at my feet.

From far-off pools and wastes of reeds I hear,

Clear and soft-piped, the chanting frogs break sweet

In full Pandean chorus. One by one

Shine out the stars, and the great night comes on.

Archibald Lampman

“Meadows shining pale with moon-tipped dandelions.”

“The stilly woods grow dark and deep…”

 I have an image of a box being passed to me with this poem inside it, a gift I can enjoy over and over again. I put it in my pocket and carry it with me wherever I go, wherever life takes me. I don’t know Lampman, and he doesn’t know me, but we share this place, this moment - and it’s beautiful.

Honey At Table

Duane Keiser

Honey At the Table




It fills you with the soft

essence of vanished flowers, it becomes

a trickle soft as a hair that you follow

from the honey pot over the table




and out the door and over the ground,

and all the while it thickens,




grows deeper and wilder, edged

with pine boughs and wet boulders,

pawprints of bobcat and bear, until




deep in the forest you

shuffle up some tree, you rip the bark,




you float into and swallow the dripping combs,

bits of the tree, crushed bees — a taste

composed of everything lost, in which everything

lost is found.


Mary Oliver

 "The soft essence of vanished flowers...thickens...grows deeper and wilder..."This is a transformation poem - flowers turn into honey, which in turn draws us into the forest and makes us wild and bearlike - and honey, honey is the golden ingredient of wonder. A  trickle of hope that perhaps after all nothing is lost, but is gathered and treasured and returned to us in a honey of moments and joys, a taste of Eden – wild, sweet, Home.



(Here's another great poem about honey.)