Distant Neighbors

Distant Neighbors: The Selected Letters of Wendell Berry & Gary Snyder. Wonderful, makes me miss the Age of Letters.

"And I myself am not comfortable with unnecessary exotic Far Eastern baggage in my secular and spiritual life here on Turtle Island. Trappings of the ancient Judeo-Roman world, or Greek Hellenistics, also strike me as exotic. Where to draw a style of our own from? The plain style of plain folks is truly attractive -- and also the free use of found feathers and beads, and the beautification of daily life with the things at hand that the Indians did so well. Oh boy: We sit in my barn doing Japanese Zen meditation, using those alien texts, but in the dialogue with the teacher, nothing is exotic -- it is really the depth of the natural heart. But the work that lies ahead, of creatively making a coherent style that fits our daily life, as well as our inner needs, is a big one; it could be a whole work in itself, even if there wasn't a planet about to crumble around us."

Gary Snyder to Wendell Berry
June 5, 1980

Bees in the Poppies

Bees in the poppies, covered with ivory pollen, 8:30 am.
Do they use it medicinally? Treatment for nosema? Indulge on winter mornings, rain falling outside? Use when the hive weakens, those last weeks of dwindling, small cluster, the chill creeping in? Are there bee doctors, prescribing the right pollen for sickness or depression?

Some dark-red and wine-purple poppies buzz with three bees at a time, while the morning haze still hangs over the grass.