A clover and a bee .. a Zen Revery?

I’ve been re-reading Emily Dickinson’s poems lately, one or two a day. Although her early editors removed her original groupings — the “fsaciles” or small booklets in which she grouped them — I enjoy the section “Nature” that groups together a major focus of her writing. Emily doesn’t write about nature as pretty or ornamental, though she certainly finds beauty and delight in it. But she writes more like a Zen monk, or like my favorite haiku poet, Kobayashi Issa.

I believe both poets lived a life of mystical spareness, Issa shouldering his poverty as a poetic forge, Emily clad in white to purify her focus. Both evoke meditative states with few words, inviting us to encounter spring not for its pretty face, but for its breathing into us a greater awareness and appreciation of life’s eternal gifts.

Just for fun, I’m putting poems by both here for comparison.This is perhaps Emily’s shortest poem, almost a haiku. Issa’s poems are both addressed to springtime, but in two very different moods. I can’t help but wonder about Emily’s spelling of the word usually spelled “reverie”. She writes it as “revery” — a combination of the words “revere” and “reverie”? For when we meditate, we appreciate deeply the subject on which we meditate.

To make a Prairie (1755)
by Emily Dickinson

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee.
And revery.
The revery alone will do, If bees are few.

Two Haiku
by Kobayashi Issa

Come and play with me
Orphan sparrow

This world
is a dewdrop world
Yes… But …

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