Wine Lily - Marianne Boruch

Bees do not care how delicately
the lily's trance
is inlaid, overrunning the garden
easily, like the deepest color
in a bruise. One looks away, for this
is utterly private.
The bees will have their communion.
They come for miles, their wooden hive
stacked up low in the field dropping straight
into woods. Across that road
the town's violinist
teaches children to sound
like crickets. They'll get better
in a lifetime. The bees have
forty-two days. So sunstruck now, they
can barely figure
the scheme of things: how much honey
by dusk, how much sweet depth
for beauty this obvious. They love their rage
and drop it like a dress for heaven. This terrible red
lasts for days, the lily basking in air.
How the bees release themselves
and rise across the human surface
exhausted, as if they were skating,
pulled by moonlight, home.