There’s a bee belly up in half an inch
of water at the bottom of an orange
plastic bucket. Is it rescuable

or not? About to drown or not, its legs
every now and again twitching? And here
I am, trying to get sane and kind, afraid

of being stung. I let my finger be
a life raft and it clings there upside down
like a little black and yellow hammock.

I lower it, bedraggled onto a narrow
pointed leaf of the monbretia, then watch
it shivering, this wolfish busy operative

reduced to a tottering remnant.
I lean forward, blow gently, more
of a warm sigh, like a giant hair dryer

and it lifts one middle leg, then another
allowing its undersides to dry,
seemingly befriended, combing

each wing slowly with its back legs,
that fuzz of body hair all but fluffed up
and sits there stilled, jewelled, cleansed

as if newly deciding. I’m half-turned
to fetch my cup of tea, when of course,
of course, it flies from all that it owes me,

or is owed, just another dot dissolving
in the great grey-washed skies – just another
insect that does not know yet how to die.

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