tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029797379711350813.post6625612088766157896..comments2024-03-27T11:02:20.107-07:00Comments on the prowling Bee: Within my reach!Susan Kornfeldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05384011972647144453noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029797379711350813.post-83008016465346715162022-05-23T14:32:35.325-07:002022-05-23T14:32:35.325-07:00The clue that unlocked this riddle poem for me is ...The clue that unlocked this riddle poem for me is in the last two lines: “Too late for striving fingers / <br />That passed, an hour ago!” Where did I recently read lines like these? Why, just two poems ago!: “An hour behind the fleeting breath—/ Later by just an hour than Death—” (Fr 67, ‘Delayed till she had ceased to know’). ED obsessed over Death. If only she had been there watching an hour ago, she could have reached out and touched Death as its “striving fingers” killed not only all the plants in her garden, but every plant in every garden in the entire village of Amherst. (Comments 2 and 3, Fr67).<br /><br />ED dearly loved her garden and personified its denizens at every opportunity. She was mightily ticked off when, an hour before dawn on June 12, 1859, Jack Frost killed every flower she had so carefully planted during the unusually early spring. She was so mad that she threatened to sue God: “Jove! Choose your counsel—/ I retain "Shaw"! (Fr101, ‘“I had some things that I called mine— And God, that he called his – ‘, Lemuel Shaw was the Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, 1830-1860.)<br /><br />Like Ishmael in Melville’s ‘Moby Dick’, the “unsuspected Violets / within the meadows” were the only survivors. Death sauntered past them without noticing because they bloomed an hour later, soon after sunrise.<br />Larry Bnoreply@blogger.com