The Pollinator's Path

Lyrics

Little sister, honeybee.
Fuzzy gold on the lavender.
I see you.
You don't see the stone wall around Mary Pratt's old garden.
You don't care about the deed filed in 1802.
For you, there's just the sun-warmed thyme,
the blue promise of the borage.
And then the lift, the hum,
a current pulling you east,
over the shingles,
over Concord Road.
You carry the dust of my quiet work on your legs.
This is the path you weave.
The invisible stitch.
From the tended rows to the wild edge.
You pull a thread of goldenrod from Great Meadows
and sew it to my squash blossom.
You connect everything.
You, with your thousand tiny eyes.
And you, Monarch, a stained-glass window catching the light.
You remember the milkweed that grew by the riverbank
before the houses came.
You find its cousins still holding on,
a bitter, necessary feast.
You rise from the cardinal flower's scarlet throat,
a fleck of wildness,
a promise of Mexico,
drifting into the Garden Club's prize-winning zinnias.
This is the path you weave.
The invisible stitch.
From the tended rows to the wild edge.
You pull a thread of goldenrod from Great Meadows
and sew it to my squash blossom.
You connect everything.
You, with your thousand tiny eyes.
Without your flight, the apple blossoms on the hill would fall barren.
Without your dance, the beans would set no pods.
Sarah Goodnow knew.
She watched you in her simples,
knew your work was a kind of medicine, too.
A quiet, buzzing magic that asks for nothing
but a place to land.
A world of color.
A little sweetness.
The sun is low now.
Your hum is fading.
Back to the hive, back to the dark.
Little sister, fuzzy gold.
Thank you for the thread.