to Before:

The Lake Isle of Innisfree
W.B. Yeats

I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

I always thought, after the first line, that this was kind of dorky. Pastoral imagery is like that. But over the years, it’s stuck around, especially the rhythm of the first sentence which delights me much the same way the opening of Ginsburg’s “A Supermarket in California”

After:

The poem comes back, twisted in my head into the phrase bee-glad rather than bee-loud. I live in a neighborhood with several California lilacs (which aren’t much like lilacs). When they’re flowering they’re thick with bees, maybe a one to ten bee:blossom ratio.

I love to stick my head as close as possible (or even into) the bush and listen. That very particular scent, temperature, sound combination makes me bee-glad (a bee-loud shrubbery rather than a bee-loud glade). It’s my version of stopping to smell the roses.