Still
by Rae Armantrout
Once we believed the bees,
moving as attention does,
settling and lifting
from blue identicals,
were the picture
of eternity.
*
Practiced hands knitting,
hole by hole,
a great, shapeless scarf.
Mind on something else.
*
A scarf?
Something intensive.
seen from afar.
Something long
–from Versed (Wesleyan University Press, 2009)
The title has two meanings: still as in yet and still as in not moving. fixed in place. The images though are in motion: bees “settling and lifting” and “practiced hands knitting”. Oh, and a wandering mind that makes that scarf (?) into something else again, something “intensive” and “long”–life or something we leave behind, still and yet?
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Read yesterday’s Thought. Thought of the Day (TOD) is selected by Rick Larios, Monday-Friday, minus public holidays and an arbitrarily chosen summer vacation. Saturday and Sunday, Stacey will be selecting TODs from the archives of past postings. Often, but not always, a comment comes with the quote. TOD originates as a personal email list-sharing and is further shared here with permission. A poem appears in full on Fridays; the copyright belongs to the poet and/or publisher. Buy poetry you like. It will be good for you, good for poets, and order from your local community bookstore and it will be good for them too.