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A continuing selection of classic and contemporary poems.

A single Clover Plank

Emily Dickinson

1343

A single Clover Plank
Was all that saved a Bee
A Bee I personally knew
From sinking in the sky—

‘Twixt Firmament above
And Firmament below
The Billows of Circumference
Were sweeping him away—

The idly swaying Plank
Responsible to nought
A sudden Freight of Wind assumed
And Bumble Bee was not—

This harrowing event
Transpiring in the Grass
Did not so much as wring from him
A wandering “Alas”—
Online text © 1998-2008 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson | Written c. 1875
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