The conversation on being is getting interesting. This poem of mine from a couple of years ago might show how I like to use the word–playfully, and bringing out its linguistic oddity. Maybe a companion piece to Mary Freeman’s good poem in the comments to the last post.
Let Be
Weeding, I disturb a bee
That is bumbling in the sages,
But she has forgiven me,
Goes off to the saxifrages.
There I will just let her be,
And, since bee-ing is her being,
She will go on being free,
She-ing while I go on me-ing.
“Let it be” was how the king
In that strange old myth or story
Gave the bee its sweet and sting,
Set the heavens in their glory:
Was it permit or command?
Do we own, or was he letting,
Are we in or out of hand?
Was he making or just betting?
So he gave himself away,
Changed from he-ing into she-ing,
Where his “shall” became her “may”,
Time born out of unforeseeing.
If I weed around the sage,
Letting it achieve its flower,
Do I make a kind of cage?
Do I claim a godlike power?
But the weeds are weeding me,
Cells that are, in acting, dying;
Sage-flowers fertilize the bee,
Every selling is a buying.
So creation is a cross,
“Let” and “be” in intersection,
Where the gain is in the loss,
And the death’s the resurrection.
