The Bee

I found the bee not moving.
Her yellow stripes were like a blob of honey
against a white parking space line.

‘It’s winter, after all’, I thought.

I stooped down – an ugly warm ball of grease and flesh
and poked the bee lightly with the end of a car key.
she did not react. She was dying.

‘It is winter, after all.’

But here? on this parking space line? On this liquid spread of minerals
which were squeezed out of a nozzle
to delineate where the machines whose waste choked you in life
may be allowed to rest?
here?

I placed the car key underneath the bee’s head
she grasped weakly and held on
like a leaf caught on a wool sweater.
I walked her to the grass.

I did not know what else to do.

I placed the bee into the grass –
by that bush – just over there.
she grasped a still green frond
and positioned herself to look up at me.

In the distance, I heard the low and cycling drone of an airplane –
within sight-line of the upward-facing bee
that she may meet with one last sense of wonder
and I will drive this car home
and rest in the lonely darkness
of winter.

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