Roses are red, violets are blue, et cetera. Perhaps you have composed a verse on the theme, as did John Jenkins in 10th Grade English, “Roses are red, violets are purple, sugar is sweet, and so is maple surple.” A sincere effort. Not quite Nash, but even so.
John, a fine person, recently passed from life. He is survived by family who in some few decades too will pass from life, and then all will pass from memory, except for memorial words rhymed or prosaic on stone.
We all would like to be remembered, though we seldom are. Life is busy, you know. Some few briefly linger in fondness or regret, then we forget. A breeze will touch a cheek, we smile; hail will sting, we frown; the breeze passes, the hail melts, each as though they never were.
Some hope that souls persist. I am among these hopefuls, always on the lookout for signs and proofs. Helps to keep me alert, sometimes helps to keep me good. I know less of souls than I knew of John Jenkins. Even so, I know I’m to pray for souls, so I do.
I know I am responsible to those who have passed from life, perhaps more so after passing than when in life. Yes, the responsibility of prayers in reparation to shorten stay in purgatory, but then too, obligations of honor, those offices due to a person’s memory, preserving of them what was good and beautiful.
Perhaps you have noticed that little survives of statuary, pictuary, temples and the rest of Homer’s time, yet in memorable verse Homer survives, Achillies survives, and there the windy plains of Priam’s high-towered Ilion, and here Helen gazes over a wine-dark sea. We recall what is worthy of memory.
First, the Word, and from this, the prose we speak when we have breath, and after these, verse, patterned language that rhymes with rhythms of the mind, like time’s clock in metered chime echoing from mind to mind, to mind.
September seventh of this year (2023) Barbara Alisa McMurray would have achieved 70 years; she would have if she could have, yet God’s plan is not our plans. Of the good she made, something remains, yet year after year memory fades and friends fall away. So it shall be with all of us.
Living is dangerous business. None of us get out of this alive. God love us all.
Bee Bee Verses 1993 – 2020: In Memoriam contains memorable verses, strong, well-built verses, verses that can be cherished because beautiful, preserved because good, because true, persist in the way of truth century into century into millennia.
God’s gifts are to be used for God’s purpose. What that purpose might be, I cannot say, I am not God, yet I feel God, I know that the talent, the skill comes from grace, not me. We all hope that the good we make survives, especially if that good is for another’s good, in memory or in life after life, after life.
Bee Bee Verses contains 53 occasional verses and a sequence of 22 sonnets. Here sharing five verses, neither best nor worst. The first, which was the first, a carpe diem, titled for publication, “Of Love”. Second is an epithalamion, a wedding poem, “Sponsalia”, a responsorial. The third is a teasing, occasional verse, “Sixty”, a birthday gift. The fourth is a devotional, “Solstice”. The fifth and final … here a most difficult choice between the morning card verse, the epigraph, and the epitaph … the epitaph, “Joy”.
* * *
Of Love
Why do the poets sigh for love,
Why pine for milk-white breasts
When what they would prefer to do
Is sink their teeth in lusty flesh:
O, give me wet and quivering thighs,
And give me hungry lips,
And give me eyes that burn with fire,
And give me bouncing hips,
And give me toes that curl in pain
From ecstasy sublime,
And give me heat from woman’s groin
When intertwined with mine!
Why mince words, why plead for love,
Why sigh for virgins pure:
Why waste your time on love divine
When what you want is woman sure.
* * *
Sponsalia
Lay your hand in mine dear,
Lay your hand in mine;
If you will lay your hand in mine
We shall like eager, fruitful vines
Intertwine:
Then I’ll be yours
And you’ll be mine.
Place your lips to mine dear,
Place your lips to mine;
If you will place your lips to mine
We two shall taste the healthy wine
Of Love’s moonshine:
Then I’ll be yours
And you’ll be mine.
Shine your eyes on mine dear,
Shine your eyes on mine;
If you will shine your eyes on mine
We shall our orbit’s course align
In love sublime:
Then I’ll be yours
And you’ll be mine:
So, shine your eyes on mine dear,
And place your lips to mine;
If you will ring your hand with mine
We two alike a fruitful vine
Shall twine our love in vows divine:
Then I’ll be yours
And you’ll be mine.
* * *
Not Sixty
I’ll write not rhyme nor trope of sixty
For my darling dear.
The word, the thought, the deed of sixty
She does not want hear.
What is this fiend, this veil of sixty
That frightens darling dear?
What hides behind the letters s-i-x-t-y
That causes pause and fear?
Sound it: “Sixty” sounds not sixty,
‘Tis young, ‘tis sweet to hear.
Or shout it, “Sixty, sixty, sixty!”
It is a roaring cheer.
Or whisper low and near, “My sixty,
My sexy, sixty dear.”
Yet, we shall not speak a line of sixty
For “sixty” hurts her ears.
No! I shall not write a rhyme of sixty
Upon her sixty year.
* * *
Solstice
When you with winter lose your looks
And I drop all my leaves,
When summer’s warmth has turned to chill
And spring to memory,
I will my dearest love you still,
Well though my buds may freeze,
When you with winter lose your looks
And I drop all my leaves.
* * *
Her Eyes Sparkled When She Smiled
When She Sang Sparrows Mimicked the Tune
When Sad Clouds Were Gray the Air Wept
Now Home All Heaven is Joy
* * *
In January 2024, The Studio Press will begin its fifth year. Some few of you know that early in 2024 all 14 books in print will be rereleased after final edits (3 with other publishers are as they are), and then the press will begin publicity, et cetera. Later, these 69 essays will be organized, each attached to the book it serves. This year, five books will be drafted or completed. Next year, publication of two books already completed, two books begun, and so on year into year until my 75th year, God willing.
* * *
Bee Bee Verses, 1993 – 2020: In Memoriam
A tribute, a bouquet, a poesy beautifully petal’d, sweet, alike honey, a golden home for Bee-Bee in poetry.
Here, a book for she of the silvery wings, of rose-thorns, of weeds and flowers wild from which she has flown away to who-knows-where without-a-care in the world, leaving behind lusty, loving verses, prayers and delicious remembrance.
Listen … read … hear the honey-sweet words of joy, the poetry of love.
This volume contains a forward by Don Juan, 53 occasional verses, and “Like a Fish”, a sequence of 22 sonnets, each and all composed for Bee-Bee.
Other works of this series include Pinhead, Branches, Pepigrams, Modern Art, Serenade, and Black-Eyed Susan.
* Bee Verses is a book of romance and adventure, sometimes erotic, ill-seasoned to delicate readers.
* * *
