Yard Work

 

The columbine grow everywhere. The bees

Pursue this with an appetite which bugs
Their eyes out, and the honey goes to feed
Those other bees, so they can churn the blue
Delphinium across the sculpted yard.
Sweetness and flight, the noblest of the bees’
Intrinsic obligations, comb-schooled: hives
Are where you have a duty, not a name;
And yet you bleed for the angelica,
Honeysuckle, and, late, the rose of sharon.
Flight in a buzz and whirr of obligation
Bring the columbine on, unto the fourth
And fortieth generation; and the queen
Invites you with the fittest floral set,
Even when brown and yellow do not go
With pink or with the silence of mid-June.