“If you fill yourself
With venom,
Only you will
Be poisoned.”
Tell that to
The cottonmouth,
The scorpion,
The brown recluse.
Tell it to
The honeybees,
The hourglass,
The vision snake.
4/17
© 2017 Edward P. Morgan III
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ReplyDeleteNotes and asides:
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The quote was from an interview with Lucille Clifton in Bill Moyers Language of Life series. The rest just sprang to mind.
Telling the honeybees is from English/Welsh/European folklore where the bees were told of important family events in exchange for honey.
The Maya called the rattlesnake the Vision Serpent.
Picture Notes:
ReplyDeleteI went on a photowalk one afternoon in 2011 in Walsingham Park, behind our house. Along the paved walking path there was a tree in bloom. Buzzing around the flowers were several bees. As I’ve said before, bees are notoriously hard to capture. This was the best picture in the lot. The branch is lit up, and and the sun is glinting off the bee’s wing. The dark background makes the bee and branch pop. The branch also adds a nice compositional element, entering the image at the lower right, as leading into the image on an angle, to the center and the bee.