Trinity in the garden

This post has two purposes: one is to confirm Linda Mosier’s post of “ZINNIAS….everyone likes Emily’s flowers!” and the other is using Emily’s poem to show the “trinity” of the garden.

Last September in my “The passing of summer” post I did use Emily’s Dickinson’s poem that ends with,

In the name of the Bee –
And of the Butterfly –
And of the Breeze – Amen!

In Helen Vender’s “Dickinson: Selected poems and Commentaries” (published last year), this is the first poem she commented. This is a lighthearted parody of the Trinitarian formula of baptism: “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 28:19). Strict or 'technical' religious persons may even say it is a “blasphemous’ parody.

There is also an alliteration (Bee, Butterfly, and Breeze) that she capitalizes to go along with “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost”. Being an original and imaginative poet, Emily is baptizing in the garden, calling authority of the Nature and to match the Christian Trinity, as Vendler commented.  No wonder Emily Dickinson said that we are “closer to God in a garden than any place on this earth.”

bee on bee balm