Hum

This was today's entry from The Writer's Almanac

What is this dark hum among the roses?
The bees have gone simple, sipping, that's all.
What did you expect? Sophistication?

They're small creatures and they are filling their bodies with sweetness,

how could they not moan in happiness?

The little worker bee lives, I have read, about three weeks.

Is that long? Long enough, I suppose, to understand that life is a blessing.

I have found them — haven't you? — stopped in the very cups of the flowers,

their wings a little tattered — so much flying about, to the hive, then out into the world, then back, and perhaps dancing, should the task be to be a scout-sweet, dancing bee.

I think there isn't anything in this world I don't admire.

If there is, I don't know what it is.

I haven't met it yet. Nor expect to.

The bee is small, and since I wear glasses, so I can see the traffic and read books, I have to take them off and bend close to study and understand what is happening.

It's not hard, it's in fact as instructive as anything I have ever studied.

Plus, too, it's love almost too fierce to endure,

the bee nuzzling like that into the blouse of the rose.

And the fragrance, and the honey, and of course the sun,

the purely pure sun, shining, all the while, over all of us.

~Mary Oliver