A PARABLE
Many of the asters that shut their purple lashes for the night have yet to open, frustrating a honeybee. A squat native bee pushes right in. --- Dave Bonta, The Morning Porch, 09-14-11
Grab every rainbow by its tail if you find it
at some foothill, wag it before it waggles you.
A parable for our times: Good guys finish last.
Is it a paradigm for what it takes to be here?
But consider these slumbering aster petals,
warding the jilted honeybee, saving nectar.
Had they laid bare what the gleaner bee
was busy about, would they not be violated?
Spared from what flowers in the field befall
in this scheme of give-and-take, the asters
are caught unawares by a squat native bee,
peon-like, barrels through, and pushes in.
Their petals askew, how would they have
seen this indelicate intrusion of someone
who has no time to spare for a flirting dance
with the windswept blossoms waiting there?
O, but how much gentler a garden would be,
if honeybees hovered and hummed to rouse
shuttered asters, lending grace to a tedious
game where they must yield to bumblebees.
--- Albert B. Casuga
09-14-11
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