Tipping the basket, I let the bee slide out through one of the side openings and onto the ground next to the hole. Its wriggling was barely visible in the dusk. I could have smashed it and put it out of its misery, but I don't know that a bee's death dance is in fact miserable. Perhaps it is full of delightful hymenopteran fancies. So I left the dying bee there on the warm, familiar soil, surrounded by tufts of sourgrass. I won't water the sourgrass tonight, and I'll leave the porch light off. Only the light of the nearly-full moon will illuminate the bee's passing.
Sunday Verse
Anthem
by Carl Phillips
Trapped bee at the glass.
A window.
Instinct is different from
to understand.
Is not the same.
The window is not the light
it fills with— has
been filling with—
What the bee ascends to.
Is full with.
To ascend.
To have been foiled.
To be consistent.
Instinct making
its own equations.
The window is not, for the bee, a window.
Is a form of resistance
not understood
because not understandable,
not in terms
of reason.
A felt force.
A force entirely:
And I said Yes. That it
had been
like that. Resistance
equaling,
at first, the light— And then resistance
as only one of the light's more difficult
and defining features.
