Second Carolina Said-Song*
Ammons, A. R. (1926-2001)

    I was walking down by the old
Santee
      River
        one evening, foredark
        fishing I reckon,

        when I come on this
swarm of
bees
    lit in the fork of a beech limb
        and they werz

        just a swarming:

    it was too late to go home
    and too far
and brang a bee-gum

        so I waited around
      till the sun went
down,
most dark,

    and cut me off a pinebough,
    dipped it in the river
        and sprankled water

on 'em: settled'em right down,
    good and solid,
about
        a bushel of
      them:

    when it got dark I first cut off
the fork branches and
then cut about four foot back toward
        the trunk

and I 
    throwed the limb over my shoulder and
        carried'em home.

---

* (as told me by a patient, Ward 3-B, Veterans Hospital, Fayetteville, August 1962)

The Oxford Book of American Light Verse (Harmon)