This month’s Versed in Florida is with poet Sidney Wade. She teaches English at the University of Florida. Her poems and translations of foreign language poems have appeared in a wide variety of journals, including Poetry, The New Yorker, and The Paris Review. WADE's Turkish poetry translations will be published in October. She tells WGCU’s Amy Tardif she’s turned to birding, landscaping and the environment and that’s what this month’s poem is about.
the chickasaw
trees are full
of bees the
pretty white
panicles
everywhere
light
turn them
frantic
as they haul
their pollen
baskets
from star
to star
to fragrant
star this
industry
thrumming
in the hearts
of flatland
plums hums
in the lucky
air far
from where
war
goes on
and on and
here on
the sun-lit
prairie light
winds shift
and dusky
nouns are sung
from the trees
where an owl
frowns
in sleep
and later
comes
in the guise
of ghost
to say
he knows
that all
the people
in a world
without bees
are lost