Working Among the Watt-stinged Honeybees

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

The semi-trucks roll

By.  They rumble and pink sweet

Peonies quiver.

~ Buson [Englished by Phillip Whidden

The father has to force his sons to work

With him as all but slaves in metal clasps

Around their wrists.  He knows he cannot shirk

This duty, but the boys don’t know the hasps

Are hasps.  Instead the sons feel that man’s love

Is firm as steel with staples.  Yes, they know

Necessity, of course.  Yet then above

The need they grasp the feeling of the flow

Of dreams for them from stories he has told

Them of his boyhood, its beauties and its weight,

And so the five of them know truth is gold.

The father never shackles them with hate.

  They sweat and suffer.  Florida flops heat

    Upon them all, but Father’s love is sweet.