#SOL16 - 11/31 - And Poetry Friday - Spring?

SOLC #11/31 - 

      I'm slicing with the Two Writing Teachers community for Day Eleven of Thirty-One of the Slice of Life Challenge in March.  Thank you Stacey, Tara, Anna, Betsy, Dana, Kathleen, Beth, and Deb.  
 
        And today it's time to gather for Poetry Friday. Visit our lovely host today, Irene Latham, at her blog Live Your Poem. Inspiring words fill the pages of those who join in. Like Slices of Life, but poetry adds a different flavor to the 'story'. This week Irene has celebrated a new book out this week, Fresh Delicious - Poems From The Farmer's Market, and shares still another new one about gathering poetry.

         Many of you know I've started working at a used book store, purely volunteer, as are all who work at this special store. I do love doing this, and have tried very hard NOT to bring home a book every week. But there are times that I just cannot leave a book lonely on the shelf. Look what I found today! I started reading it, and know it's going to be pure pleasure. 



        I also began looking for a spring poem to share. In Colorado we can still have snow through May, and today seems like April instead of March. When I discovered the book by E.B. White, I looked there. I found one, but cannot find it anywhere online, so you must be content with only part.  I hope you are able to find the rest. Here is the first verse which also is the final one:

Pigeon, Sing  Cuccu!

Earth is a hoyden, loud rejoice:
       Pigeon, Sing  Cuccu!
The green girl, spring, has found her voice,
       My heart is piercèd through.

       
And among other beautiful ones, and allowing White's words to entertain me, I found a poem that feels spring-like. It's a love letter to his wife, contains a spider and makes a sweet connection. You'll see. In his poem Locksley Hall,  Alfred, Lord Tennyson tells "In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love." Evidently, so did E.B. White's fancy.

The poem: Natural History (A Letter to Katharine, from the King Edward Hotel, Toronto)

The spider, dropping down from twig,
Unwinds a thread of her devising:
A thin, premeditated rig
To use in rising.

The remaining words are HERE,  The poem's title is different in various places.

           I read The Story of Charlotte's Web a few years ago, a wonderful book, and in my search for this poem, I discovered that it is in this book too, with its story.  E.B. White sent this poem to his wife in 1929, only three weeks after their marriage. He had grown up studying all sorts of creatures, and the text says, "Finally, he wrote a poem to her that united his close-up observation of nature and his growing sense that their marriage was the right antidote to his rootlessness." Charlotte's Web was published in 1952. Spring and spiders are on their way.