Sunflow’r Affixed to a Bee
We had a cold stretch here-not a surprise, but a bit early. And part of that wild unpredictability that seems to be the ‘new normal.’ (Last week we had a high of 90; this week we had a low of 38). And one of the sunflowers I had planted in the spring came (at last, at least) to bloom. It was an unimaginable surprise then, on a cold morning, to see two plump honeybees motionless in the center of the flower. It was perhaps my ignorance, but I thought they had frozen in the middle of the night.
They hadn’t. Sensing a tragedy writ small (yet who am I to say what the scale of two bees dying of frost should be?) I touched one of them, ever so slightly, with my fingertip. And it stirred to life. Just slightly. But enough to know they had not died.
The next day, one was stirring and gathering pollen, and another was still. So again I touched. It stirred more vehemently (the sun was quickening and the air was warmer) and scraped its back leg against its body, where I had touched it, before it too began to gather pollen.
Which was perhaps a sign that I should stay out of the way, and trust the communiques between sun, sunflower and bee.
