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To a Honeybee
Hail, time-tossed traveler,
trapped in the tears of mourning trees.
Your descendants now dance differently;
the stories their scents tell are strange to you.
Would you call kin such alien creatures?
But the same sunlight falls on this strange place;
the leaves still look towards its light,
and the daughters of Adria still dress in black.
Their sap is as sweet as ever it seemed.
Now we have made our way to marvel at your miniscule form,
to wonder at the world that once you roamed,
and seek the stories you secret away.
Rejoice; you are remembered, despite the ravages of time.
trapped in the tears of mourning trees.
Your descendants now dance differently;
the stories their scents tell are strange to you.
Would you call kin such alien creatures?
But the same sunlight falls on this strange place;
the leaves still look towards its light,
and the daughters of Adria still dress in black.
Their sap is as sweet as ever it seemed.
Now we have made our way to marvel at your miniscule form,
to wonder at the world that once you roamed,
and seek the stories you secret away.
Rejoice; you are remembered, despite the ravages of time.
The honeybee here is the Unknown Soldier, and the poem a little like a letter we might write to them, never to be read; it reflects our own sense of impending history.
The line with "daughters of Adria" is the most evocative, but seems a little out of place in a piece which seems to address itself to evolution. I tried to discover what might have been meant by it, but the nearest counterpart I could find was a city of the same name, which sits on a buried town from antiquity.
The line with "daughters of Adria" is the most evocative, but seems a little out of place in a piece which seems to address itself to evolution. I tried to discover what might have been meant by it, but the nearest counterpart I could find was a city of the same name, which sits on a buried town from antiquity.
Seems to be about an insect trapped in amber, appropriately enough for the prompt, but it was apparent enough without knowing the prompt. No structure to speak of, but I like the language here. You'd make me go look up what the reference to Adria meant, but the rest was clear. Free verse is kind of tricky to make impressive. It inherently takes less effort, but then it also doesn't get the odd turns of language required to compress words into certain rhythms and rhymes, so it can flow more naturally. But it also almost never feels like the way it's organized carries any meaning, so I'm left wondering whether the choice of where to break lines or start new stanzas is supposed to convey something I'm missing. Like if it was written as prose, does it lose any of its meaning? And maybe shaping it in a way that it's not obviously prose gets the reader to think about it in a more abstract form? It's kind of maddening at times, since I've been on both sides, feeling like I'm not getting so much out of free verse, but also being disappointed when putting a lot of effort into it that people are more dismissive of it.
Anyway, I've wandered far off the point.
Despite the possibility that it was easier to write this way, I still found it an interesting and pleasant read.
Anyway, I've wandered far off the point.
Despite the possibility that it was easier to write this way, I still found it an interesting and pleasant read.