The Linden Tree Report

Dear Reader,

The honey bees are dancing in the linden tree, and it occurs to me that their work is entertainment to me. Studying the fragrant tree (reminds Word Raccoon of the scent of honeysuckle) with its heart-shaped leaves is my work today. I have just read Rilke for next week (first read); I am absorbed and absorbing. 

Ants keep me company here on the porch of my favorite cafe, and squirrels, and birds. And the honeybees! 

Various people likewise shimmer back and forth, giving me the companionable drone but not a buzz. 

Word Raccoon has been taking pictures of trees and all about her; she has some lines she’s going to spin into poems, but she insists they are still percolating.

Here’s a (very) young poem:

Poetry is

The language of

Nature,

both earth’s firstborn

and second.

In it; of it.

We give nature speech.

No, interpretation.

Images, sure, land better,

toast with tea,

but sometimes a thought

expressed

is a necessary

introduction to

the play,

which is, we are told,

the thing.

Her head is full of Rilke. Not just the poems, but the whatever it’s called, his “Prodigal Son,” prose of some sort. An essay? It’s an excellent rebuttal to the Biblical tale and brimming with insight on loving and being loved, on familial expectations. 

I’m not even reading him in German (because I can’t), and I am having to read and re-read this group of poems just to believe what I’m reading. Heady. (I keep saying that about Rilke, don’t I?) 

Which brings me to this question, which is probably elemental, but I need to know, and when something is necessary, pride must be put aside: when does a poem begin? At its title or its first line? 

Because that can change the meaning, and especially when I read an initially impenetrable poem, I revisit the title for help. Sometimes that’s not helpful. 

I read a poetry craft book this past winter and the author used titles that were obviously the first line of the poem, like a doorway that shoved you in, but I don’t typically (ever?) do that and so many others don’t, so I need to know how to weigh a title. (No judgment, just observation.)

Is it of private interpretation? Does it depend on the poem and/or the poet? 

If that is so, then can there be a definitive answer for an individual poem? 

These are not life-and-death questions, I know, and yet it will affect my own titles. (That is something I’m still working on. Sometimes I want the titles to be frames, sometimes I want them to be echoes. Sometimes I want them to be garlands.)  

Can a person be afraid of loving words unreservedly? I told my writing mother once that I’m afraid to fully embrace the words. If I could, what might happen to my writing? Would it be better or worse? I flinch from them sometimes and the power they can have. I joke; I obfuscate. I try not to alienate. 

There are black, white, and red butterflies vying with the honey bees for the flowers’ interiors. Are they enemies or merely adjacent workers? 

Do they know I’m watching them as they ceaselessly lift off from limb to flower-covered limb? 

Word Raccoon is afraid of rejection by the words, and even then, she has a toolkit and she’s not afraid to use it, to gently work at the words, to ask them to kindly yield. I, however, am still working on it. Because not only is there the tri-cord: What if I can’t bear it? What if I still can’t say what I want to say? What if they still don’t give me all of their colors? 

But there’s this: What if my words can’t take someone’s breath the way these poets do mine? Are my efforts still worthy? 

To anyone else asking, I’d say of course. The world of words is different from, say, tennis. There will always be room for words of all stripes, always an audience. (And by that I just mean company to share the thoughts.) No one cares if you lose your backhand when you write. 

The breeze on the cafe porch is perfect, though there is a heat advisory in effect. Two young women are nattering on (isn’t nattering the perfect word for that? not all scenarios have such perfect synonyms), and though WR forgot to pick up her AirPods this morning, her writing and observation concentration are pulled as tightly as a sheet on a hotel bed. No slack(ing) here. 

Writing anyway,

Drema