What is this dark hum among the roses?
The bees have gone simple, sipping,
that's all. What did you expect? Sophistication?
They're small creatures and they are
filling their bodies with sweetness, how could they not
moan in happiness? The little
worker bee lives, I have read, about three weeks.
Is that long? Long enough, I suppose, to understand
that life is a blessing. I have found them-haven't you?—
stopped in the very cups of the flowers, their wings
a little tattered-so much flying about, to the hive,
then out into the world, then back, and perhaps dancing,
should the task be to be a scout-sweet, dancing bee.
I think there isn't anything in this world I don't
admire. If there is, I don't know what it is. I
haven't met it yet. Nor expect to. The bee is small,
and since I wear glasses, so I can see the traffic and
read books, I have to
take them off and bend close to study and
understand what is happening. It's not hard, it's in fact
as instructive as anything I have ever studied. Plus, too,
it's love almost too fierce to endure, the bee
nuzzling like that into the blouse
of the rose. And the fragrance, and the honey, and of course
the sun, the purely pure sun, shining, all the while, over
all of us.
Love too fierce to endure
To see life as a blessing, no matter what!
To admire everything in life
….To seek understanding of what is happening, now, this moment
….To dance under the sun as One.
….To bee, to be.
Where the light of love too almost too fierce to endure for you?
I've been reading my way through this site for a while now. What a treasure! I love Mary Oliver's poems and haven't read all of them. This has become part of my morning poetry routine. I can look at them from my bedroom window, totally focused on the sweetness of just one flower, and then another.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this one. It's the time of year when blossoms for a fall raspberry crop and the tomatoes are drawing the bees that were in my yard in huge numbers for earlier flowers.
I added this poem to a collection I'd created of poems about bees and honey: https://biketoworkbarb.blogspot.com/2025/01/hey-honey-poems-about-bees.html.