Poetry on Thursday

E. B. White is one of my favorite authors, from his children's books to his essays written for adults. It's no surprise that he also wrote poetry. In true E.B. White fashion, he writes this introduction to his book of poetry:

This is a fraudulent book. Here I am presented as a poet, when it is common knowledge that I have never received my accreditation papers admitting me to the ranks of American poets. Having lived happily all my life as a non-poet who occasionally breaks into song, I have no wish at this late hour to change either my status or my habits even if I were capable of doing so, and I clearly am not. The life of a non-poet is an agreeable one: he feels no obligation to mingle with other writers of verse to exchange sensitivities, no compulsion to visit the “Y” to read from his own works, no need to travel the wine and cheese circuit, where the word “poet” carries the aroma of magic and ladies creep up from behind carrying ballpoint pens and sprigs of asphodel.

But even as a "non-poet" he wrote some lovely poems, like this one that he sent in a letter to his wife Katherine. 

Natural History

E.B. White

The spider, dropping down from twig,

Unwinds a thread of her devising:

A thin, premeditated rig

To use in rising.

And all the journey down through space,

In cool descent, and loyal-hearted,

She builds a ladder to the place

From which she started.

Thus I, gone forth, as spiders do,

In spider’s web a truth discerning,

Attach one silken strand to you

For my returning

White, E.B. "Natural History". Poems and Sketches of E.B. White, Harper & Row, 1981. 

I wish you mindfulness, peace, presence, time spent in and with nature, and some poetry as this week winds down.