Time to Turn (a Quadrille)

Osier wands planted in November
are almost trees.
Now’s the time when we remember
to pluck a switch or three
of willow, white with soft, sleek
buds, gold with catkins, sweet
temptation to hungry humming
bees, still drowsy and crawling
from their winter sleep.

Kim M. Russell, 6th March 2019

Image result for catkins Pinterest
Image found on Pinterest

My response to dVerse Poets Pub Poetics: Turn, Turn, Turn . . ., also linked to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads Tuesday Platform

Lillian is our host for this week’s Poetics and she’s been thinking about time. She reminds us of a wise verse from the Bible, from Ecclesiastes, which was also made into a well-known song by Pete Seeger and later recorded by The Byrds, the version I remember.

Lill has asked us to choose times mentioned in the Ecclesiastes quotation and include them word for word, in a poem OR let them motivate our poems, with no need to mention them word for word but we should be able to identify the reference OR create our own time frame and write a poem that includes the words ‘a time to _____________ ‘ and we fill in the blank.

34 thoughts on “Time to Turn (a Quadrille)”

  3. Your choice of words is mesmerizing: wands, soft sleek buds, hungry humming bees….
    I usually think of spring as just that — springing up — an energy to it. And you’ve changed my view here with the softness, drowsiness, and the languid humming bees! 🙂 Kind of like that bear, yawning, stretching and slowing getting his balance back again! 🙂

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  6. Such splendid use of imagery and diction in this one, Kim! ❤️ Especially love; “to pluck a switch or three
    of willow, white with soft, sleek buds.” Wow! 😀

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  11. I am positively longing for bees, but here I am stuck between two snowfalls (we had one on Monday and are expecting another on Friday). I’ll keep my ears open for their song.

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    1. We had some rain yesterday but this morning is sunny and we have snowdrops, daffodils, and buds on the willow! I’m willing some to you across the Atlantic, Glenn!

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  15. Excellent rendition of the niceties of the coming of spring. We killed two woosely wasps this evening who were wrapped in the wrap I’d taken off our Orange tree earlier this morning (a deterent to the frosting of the budding blossoms). I like that passage from Ecclesiastics, Kim. I also like the song, “Turn, Turn” which quotes Ecclesiastics.
    ..

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