A Word to the Bees

Poems at the End of Spring

I begin this post with my thanks to everyone who wrote to encourage me last week. It took time, a lot of thought, and a couple of difficult telephone calls to learn that the things I had been concerned about were already being well handled. Better still, that this was happening with no need for my involvement. This is a tremendous relief.

In the meantime, spring is tipping over into an early summer here in Arizona. One of the last trees to leaf out, the mesquites are now a froth of pale green leaves and flowers. Dare I admit that it is only this year that I finally realized its blooms are fragrant?!

The blooms of the mesquite are held in long, slender catkins. Being about the same color and length as the new foliage, they are easy to miss. But they introduce one of the main crops of a desert spring in the Sonora.

To the Bees

Black and tawny, waken now!
Green flower buds are on the bough;
The writhen boughs are soft and sweet
With flower buds on the mesquite.

Green the blooms that open there,
And sweet the scent that tempts the air
To linger round each truss of bloom,
To whisper through its soft perfume.

Swiftly come and swiftly go
The springing blooms from bud to blow.
The sun-scorched boughs are soft with spring,
But summer’s close with heat rising.

Black and tawny, do not wait,
But seek their nectar–not too late
To pack their pollen at your knees
Before it’s scattered by the breeze.

Swiftly go and swiftly come
And fill the flower plumes with hum
Of springtime’s sprightly melody
While buds still blossom on the tree.

Green the blooms that beckon you,
And sweet the fragrance where you flew
To find the treasures of the spring,
The sweet before the heat rising.

---

Now that the clouds are gone, the waxing moon makes marvelous shadows.

I love moon shadows,
black against the burnished earth,
elongate, slender

---

There has been a lot of desert chia (Salvia columbariae) down in the wash this year. The plants and especially the blooms are quite small.

Spring Chia

The chia bloomed all through the wash this spring,
In whorls of indigo-purple flowers
Small as a lizard’s eye with two white lashes,
With leaves scallop-edged
And wrinkled of surface
Like the skin of a snake.
Wet was the rain this spring,
Yet dry was the sand
With its tiny mats of deep green
And its goblets of purple flowers
A gift from the mountain gods
To celebrate the spring.

---