The Bees

After they’ve gone, at dusk,
I cut back the stalks
of lamb’s ear where they’ve fed
all day for many days
a buzzing swarm of bumblebees.

They’ve hurt no one so far
though even I tense
as I climb the steps
past their busy dance
in the unprepossessing pink.

Nothing else values these blooms.
Voices in gardening books recoil:
keep the foliage, lose the ugly spires.

And I do, now that the light
has disappeared along with the bees.
They are punctual and polite.
In ten years they have not stung,
but I banish them as I cannot
banish the others, human busybodies,
less kind than these bees.

Tomorrow when they return
to the stacked stalks on the ground
and burrow in what was once sweet
will any know loss or grief?
Or will they turn quickly,
thimble buddhas, and wing past
suffering, headed for the crests
of lavender, all sway and chance?

Kathryn Kirkpatrick