Life on My Deck

 Life On My Deck

I see a bee, clutching a rose petal, falling, tumbling with it toward the deck,

‘til midway down, he lets go, flies up again to fumble into his chosen blossom 

and crawl onto another petal, ‘til it, too, goes down spinning while he holds on...

He lets go, flies up, latches on, and no kidding, the third petal goes down too,

with him on it!   That bee is like a kid on the slopes with his flying saucer-sled, no sooner at the bottom of the hill than running up to do it again.  This time, however, Mr. Bumble chooses a newer, stronger blossom whose petals don’t detach.

O, the bees, the bees in the rugosa roses, handsome as ever, curled in the pink petal cups, their stripy black bodies arched over stamens, their velvety legs dusted with yellow pollen. The center of the rose remains serene in its mission to become the fruit, to grow into a fat red rose hip.  From my chair, I still hear their buzzing.

They say the pollinators are at risk.  So I guess it’s good that ordinary house flies are at it too, and wasps and hornets and some little guys whose name I’ll probably never know.  Maybe you’ve seen them, grey, straight bodied, about as big as a fine pencil lead, but built to hover, to hang in the air reconnoitering before darting into an opening bloom. There was a browny-green bug, too, pear shaped, flat as a sunflower seed, iridesent, six legged, flailing.  

Lots going on as the thermometer rises and the day moves on toward noon.  It’s a second round of blooming for the roses, which now reach through the railings, pushing out over the stairs, dense clusters of buds at the ready, the secret old roots conspiring with all comers in its enterprise.

                                        -Sef 7/27/2015, rev. 3/9/‘25