HONEYBEE
By Naomi Shihab Nye
Greenwillow Books, 2008
Category: Poetry
How could I not pick up this book? A little honeybee buzz, a little reviewer buzz (Richie Partington’s review), a little cover buzz (a la Chris Raschka); not even my fear of poetry could keep me from reading HONEYBEE.
I was surprised to find in it a collection of poems and paragraphs that are as much about the curious way we humans live as they are about honeybees:
There is a poem about unacceptable contradictions, as in
“George W. Bush believes
In a ‘culture of life’.This is very interesting to those
Who have recently died
Because of his decisions.”
And there is a poem about the joy and guilt that is motherhood, as in
“Take your laundry baskets, your first-aid kit,
But don’t take my failings, okay? Forget the times
I snapped, or had no patience, okay?”
The piece I can’t shake is the one called “We Are The People”.
“I know people who, the minute they get into their homes, tell you where they are going next.”
Nye goes on to tell of the evening she decided to slow down, take in a sunset from her front porch. A neighbor, out walking the dog, stopped to ask if she was locked out of the house.
“So ask yourself, you swirling tornado of a human being, in a world of disoriented honeybees, do you want to look locked out the minute you sit down?”
No. I most definitely do not.