I love independent book stores and found myself perusing one in the historic downtown of Poulsbo, WA. Sometimes it feels like the books choose me, which is what seemed to happen when I picked up Buzz Words—Poems About Insects. We’ve heard several squeals these past weeks from the kids—an ant, a spider, an…ahhh, what’s that!? They are our neighbors, residing in nature with us, I often say, and yet, memories of wasp stings and spider bites do invoke compassion when they dash inside or up the trail.
The cover is smooth and elegant, the size, a perfect fit in the small black bag of notecards I had just purchased from a local artist’s collective. I opened to the first poem and laughed in delight, then felt horror at the next, then delight again. Here are two of my favorite so far, and a picture of clever ants sojourning on a flower bud at evening time:
BUGS IN A BOWL
Han Shan, the great and crazy, wonder-filled
Chinese poet of a thousand years ago said:
We’re just like bugs in a bowl. All day
Going around never leaving their bowl.
I say, That’s right! Every day climbing up
The steep sides, sliding back.
Over and over again. Around and round.
Up and back down.
Sit in the bottom of the bowl, head in your hands,
Cry, moan, feel sorry for yourself.
Or. Look around. See your fellow bugs.
Walk around.
Say, Hey, how you doin’?
Say, Nice bowl!
—David Budbill
ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET
The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper’s—he takes the lead
In summer luxury, — he has never done
With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there
Shrills
The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.
—John Keats
Reflections by Rabbi Kim 